After the winter weather forced the closure of major COVID-19 vaccination centers last week, Dallas and Tarrant counties faced another setback as the state announced it would reduce its dose allocation to zero this year. week for Dallas County Health and Human Services and Tarrant County Public Services. Health.
Other centers in the counties, such as Dallas Parkland Hospital and Texas Health in Fort Worth, will still get large amounts of vaccine.
“We have people waiting on the list since January to get a vaccine,
therefore, we need them not to be mixed with the North Texas vaccine, ”said Dallas County Judge Clay Jenkins.
The passage of the state occurs after collaborations with FEMA were known in both counties.
This week, FEMA will begin operating vaccination centers in Dallas’ Fair Park and
Arlington’s Globe Life Field. Both sites will vaccinate 21,000 people a week for three weeks and will focus on vaccinating those who live in underserved zip codes.
Dallas County Human and Health Services
Tarrant County Judge Glen Whitley said he was assured that the state’s supply of vaccines would not be reduced before accepting the FEMA partnership.
“It’s pretty disappointing,” Whitley said. “We are doing everything we said we would do and we just want the state to step up and do what they agreed to do when we agreed to be a FEMA site.”
Whitley said the state measure reduced 16,000 vaccines from its planned allocation this week and caused them to spread to other vaccination sites.
On Monday afternoon, Whitley said Texas Health Resources had agreed to donate 5,000 of its doses to the health department to help vaccinate more people off the county waiting list.
Jenkins said the state’s decision means at least 9,000 fewer people will be vaccinated this week than expected. He said the state decision also affected vaccination assignments at other vaccination sites in the county.
“The state gets a record amount of vaccine this week. We don’t ask for more than we get. We only ask for what citizens have received each week,” Jenkins said.
NBC 5 contacted the office of the Texas State Department of Health and the office of Gov. Gregg Abbott for information about the decision and received the following statement from a DSHS spokesman.
“The vaccine assigned to Dallas and Tarrant counties is roughly the same as in recent weeks to include the doses associated with the FEMA effort. With an advantage of more than 84,000 doses for just three counties, the expert vaccine allocation panel recommended sending additional doses to parts of the state that have not received nearly as many vaccines, according to its principle of equitable distribution of the vaccine throughout the state. . This allowed us to assign the vaccine to 230 counties for next week, most weeks so far.
“The vaccine is assigned weekly and the amount of vaccine available varies each week.“
Both Whitley and Jenkins have contacted the health department and the governor’s office to appeal the decision.
Want to get a waiting list for vaccines?
When the state begins distributing COVID-19 vaccines to people in Phase 1A and 1B, county health departments have begun waiting lists for those who wish to be inoculated.
You can now register for vaccination in Collin, Dallas, Denton and Tarrant counties. The links are below:
Waiting list links: Collin – Search the waiting list | Dallas | Denton | Tarrant
You do not need to be a county resident to register for a COVID-19 vaccine in that county; registration is open to anyone in Texas. For those without Internet access, Tarrant County is also registering by phone at 817-248-6299. In Dallas County, call the DCHHS Vaccine Hotline at 1-855-IMMUNE9 (1-855-466-8639). In Denton County, call 940-349-2585.