Turner joins mayors across country asking for direct access to shots
A group of mayors representing some of the nation’s most populous cities — including Houston, San Antonio and Austin — is asking President-elect Joe Biden to give them direct access to coronavirus vaccines.
In a letter, the 22 mayors urged the Biden administration to establish a national vaccine distribution plan for cities, instead of allocating all available doses to state governments.
“Cities have consistently been on the front line of our nation’s COVID-19 response,” San Antonio Mayor Ron Nirenberg said on Twitter. “I’m proud to join my mayoral colleagues in requesting that the Biden Administration prioritize a direct line of vaccines to our com
munities. We must do all we can to expand and improve access.”
Direct shipments of the vaccine would allow local leaders to plan and connect directly with their constituents, including disadvantaged communities, and help distribute vaccines more swiftly, the mayors argue.
“While it is essential to work with state and local public health agencies, health care providers, pharmacies, and clinics, there is a need to be nimble and fill gaps that are unique to each local area,” they wrote. “Very few cities are receiving direct allocations, and as a result, the necessary outreach needed to lay the groundwork for your vaccination goals are not being met.”
The mayors of the country’s three largest cities — New York City, Los Angeles and Chicago — also signed the letter. The request comes amid widespread dissatisfaction over a sluggish vaccine rollout; just 37 percent of the total doses allocated to states so far have been put into people’s arms, according to a Bloomberg News tracker.
“While the traditional health care network will be the answer to ongoing vaccinations in the long term, by allocating vaccines directly to cities and providing funding to support their efforts, more vaccines can be administered in a more quick and efficient matter,” they said.
Texas is among the states with the best track record for distributing vaccines so far, with about half of its allocation already administered, according to the Bloomberg tracker.
Still, the vaccine rollout has hardly been smooth in Texas. Providers across the state have reported supply issues, with too few doses available to satisfy a huge demand. That has left hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of eligible Texans unable to register for a shot and, in many cases, unsure where to look for one.
This week, the state shifted its distribution strategy from giving a small number of doses to many providers to instead providing about 30 large-scale providers with thousands of vaccines. The effort, state officials said, will consolidate available doses and make them more accessible.
The state is not currently reporting demographic data on those who get the vaccine, leaving questions about whether the doses are reaching Black and Latino Texans; those demographics account for nearly 60 percent of the state’s COVID-19 deaths so far.
1 million doses given
Both vaccines approved by the federal government — manufactured by Pfizer and Moderna — require two doses spaced about a month apart. As of Thursday, nearly 900,000 Texans had received their first doses, and more than 130,000 are fully immunized, according to the state’s vaccine dashboard.
That makes Texas the first state to administer more than 1 million doses — outpacing other large states, including California, Florida and New York. That milestone is a small step in the effort to vaccinate as many willing Texans as possible in a state of about 29 million residents.
“This is the biggest vaccination effort we have ever undertaken, and it would not be possible without the dedication and tireless efforts of our health care workers,” Gov. Greg Abbott said in a Thursday release. “We still have a long road ahead of us, but Texans continue to prove that we are up to this challenge.”
Neither the governor’s office nor the Department of State Health Services responded to requests for comment Thursday on the letter.
In total, nearly 2.1 million doses have been set aside for Texans, and about 1.7 million doses of that supply have been shipped to vaccine providers, including hospitals and pharmacies, according to state data.
The states that have administered the most doses, including
Texas, have deviated from the federal government’s initial recommendations for vaccine priority groups. Those guidelines originally prioritized only front-line health care workers and nursing home residents, followed by those over 75 and essential employees such as teachers and grocery store workers.
Removing the middleman
In the last week of December, Texas abruptly expanded eligibility to priority group 1B — those 65 and older and anyone 16 and older with certain pre-existing conditions. Health care workers and long-term care residents were members of group 1A; essential employees are not yet eligible for the vaccine here.
In creating those vaccination “hubs,” the state began to filter a large portion of its doses directly to local health departments, as the city leaders requested of the incoming Biden administration on Wednesday. Developing a national vaccine distribution plan for cities would remove the middleman.
“Working in partnership with the state and private sectors, cities have led the way in reacting robust testing programs similar to how mass vaccination programs would work,” said Houston Director of Government Relations Bill Kelly, who worked with Mayor Sylvester Turner on the letter. “Getting a direct and predictable supply of COVID-19 vaccines would allow for a faster and more localized administration of vaccinations.”
A more localized approach would also help better reach diverse communities, he added.
In Austin, Mayor Steve Adler said he’s seen evidence of that already. Before the state shifted to a mass vaccination strategy this week, the state distributed most of the area’s supply to “the west side of town, where you have the greatest numbers of grocery stores and pharmacies.”
But this week, after Austin Public Health directly received 12,000 doses, the city set up distribution sites on the east side of the city and was able to “reach quickly, with great volume, the people in our city over 65, predominantly of color,” Adler said.
“We believe that getting a vaccine out to ... local health authorities is going to be the best way to get the greatest amount of vaccines out, the most quickly, to those people that are most susceptible and most vulnerable,” he said.