Half of eligible Texans now fully vaccinated
Milestone comes as youth vaccination rates lag, delta variant spreads
Texas has reached a new milestone in the effort to vaccinate people against COVID-19: As Monday, more than 50 percent of Texans eligible for the shot — those age 12 and older — have been fully vaccinated.
The current vaccine rate of 50.1 percent, reported by the state on Tuesday, is a far cry from the original goal set by President Joe Biden’s administration — 70 percent of eligible Americans fully vaccinated by the holiday weekend. In recent months, immunization rates have slowed considerably, forcing local officials to rely on incentives to bring people in for shots.
“The issue is ‘50 percent vaccinated’ does not mean in all communities 50 percent are vaccinated,” said Catherine Troisi, an infectious disease epidemiologist with the Uthealth School of
Public Health. “Among people over 65, it’s very high. Among young people, not as good — the 12-17-year-olds.” Vaccination rates plateaued in
April, less than a month after the Department of State Health Services expanded the eligibility criteria to all adults. Public health officials are struggling to overcome vaccine hesitancy as well as bringing people to immunization sites, which may operate at times and locations that are hard for people to access.
While the U.S. Food and Drug Administration authorized Pfizer for emergency use in 12- to 15year-olds in mid-may, prompting a small bump in sign-ups, most states across the country are grasping at straws to convince more people to sign up.
About 1 million Bexar County residents — nearly 60 percent of the eligible population — have been fully vaccinated against the coronavirus. More than 1.2 million, nearly 74 percent, have received at least one dose.
On Friday, one of San Antonio’s biggest vaccine sites, the Wonderland of the Americas vaccine hub run by University Health, closed its doors. It had been open for just over six months.
“At our busiest time, we were giving close to 8,000 shots a day,” said Bill Phillips, senior vice president and chief information officer at University Health. Phillips has been in charge of daily operations since the beginning.
But in recent weeks, the number of people walking in for shots has dwindled as more people got vaccinated.
Assistant City Manager Colleen Bridger, who oversees the San Antonio Metropolitan Health District, said last week that health officials are struggling to reach about 100,000 residents who got their first shot but haven’t returned for the second.
More than 25 million COVID-19 vaccine doses have been administered in Texas, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. While the state has received the secondhighest number of vaccine doses in the country, it ranks 37th in vaccination rates among all states.
As the delta variant rapidly spreads across the country — an estimated 1 in 4 new infections in the U.S. are tied to the variant — infectious diseases experts worry the unvaccinated are at high risk of severe sickness.
“We’re still learning about long-term consequences,” Troisi said. “So if you’re young, the odds you’re going to die are very small.”
It’s crucial for public health officials to emphasize the importance of protecting those who can’t be vaccinated or who are immunosuppressed, experts said, because there is still limited data on whether people who have been immunized can carry and spread the virus.