Vaccination ‘hubs’ are coming next week
State officials will start distributing most of Texas’ vaccine doses nextweek to a handful of large pharmacies and hospitals, creating “vaccination hubs” where more people can get shots quickly, the Department of State Health Services said Thursday.
Those hubs will receive about 75 percent of the state’s vaccine allotment next week and could inoculate more than100,000 people, officials said.
The state will release the list of providers by Saturday, after the federal government decides how many doses texas will receive next week.
The large-scale vaccination model represents a shift in strategy for the state, which so far has allocated a small number of vaccines to about 1,000 providers statewide.
The new effort, Dshs officials said, will consolidate vaccination sites and provide people, especially vulnerable individuals, with “a simpler way to sign upfor an appointment.”
The department issued a survey to providers earlier this month gauging their ability to operate large-scale community vaccination sites.
Providers participating in the program will post registration phone numbers and websites where people can sign up for doses.
Currently, the state is vaccinating Texans in groups 1A or 1B — health care workers, first responders, nursing home residents, those ages 65 and older, pregnant women and anyone 16 and older who has a pre-existing condition, such as cancer, obesity or
sickle cell disease.
In total, both large and small providers statewide will receive about 200,000 more doses next week, the DSHS said. As of Thursday, Texas providers have received more than1.3 million doses of the vaccine.
In San Antonio, Assistant City Manager Colleen Bridger said she expects about 19,725 doses to arrive in Bexar County next week just for the mass inoculation effort.
A “supersmall number of other doses” will go to a handful of other providers, she said.
Health officials are planning to hold three largescale vaccination events every week at locations on the North, central and South sides of the city, she said.
Bridger previously indicated both the state and Bexar County were moving toward a mass vaccination model, with an early example being one at Wonderland of the Americas mall.
There, University Health System has been inoculating about 1,500 people a day, having started Monday.
“They're pivoting away from their original model, which was 100 doses (each) to 1,000 providers” state
wide, Bridger said earlier this week. “And now they're saying, ‘Alright, we want to focus on mass-vaccination clinics, so we're going to send 100,000 doses to a handful of providers.' ”
The shift to a mass vaccination model accompanies widespread confusion surrounding the state's vaccine rollout, with eligible Texans unsurewhere to turn to find doses.
At the end of December, the state had said providers were leaving a “significant portion” of Texas' vaccine allotment on shelves, while pharmacies and hospitals said they had scheduled out all available doses.
Those data discrepancies, some of which were attributable to technological errors, only further muddled the public's understanding of the process.
The federal government has approved two vaccines — one by Pfizer, and the other by Moderna. Both are MRNA vaccines and have a 95 percent effectiveness in preventing COVID-19 disease in adults when given as directed in two doses.
For the Pfizer vaccine made with Biontech, the second dose comes 21 days after the first one. Moderna's second dose is 28 days later.
Only about 322
Bexar
County residents have received both doses as of Wednesday. That leaves more than 39,000people in the San Antonio area — mostly front-line health care workers and nursing home residents — still in need of the second dose to get full protection against the coronavirus.
Statewide, more than 527,000 Texans have received their first dose, and nearly 14,000 people are fully vaccinated.
Providers aren't responsible for reserving second doses for their patients; instead, the federal government is keeping track of that supply and will provide the doses when they're ready to be administered. This week, Texas providers received more than 325,000 first doses and nearly 225,000 second doses, the DSHS said.
Local officials are counting on federal leaders to continue following through on those allocations.
“So far, they have kept their promise,” said Dr. Robert Leverence, chief medical officer for UT Health San Antonio, the city's largest medical school. “(It) does cause some anxiety, though.”