Texas officials cut the number of COVID-19 injections for Dallas residents, county says

The number of first doses of the COVID-19 vaccine for Dallas and Tarrant county residents next week will be cut in half due to a state decision, county officials said on Friday.

Dallas County Judge Clay Jenkins said the state has reduced the approximately 40,000 doses allocated to DFW residents next week to about 20,000 because Dallas and Tarrant counties are receiving about 20,000 injections from FEMA.

But these extra FEMA photos are only for residents of 17 economically disadvantaged zip codes, said Jenkins.

This means that fewer injections will be available to needy residents of northern Texas who live outside the 17 zip codes, he said.

The state’s decision affects the county’s vaccine distribution for the next three weeks, Jenkins said.

“Those were extra doses to help more Texans,” said Jenkins on Friday night. “We should not be punished because we are trying to get more vaccines.”

State Department Health Services Commission spokesman Chris Van Deusen said that Dallas County will be “about the same level as it has been in recent weeks”.

The county was “over-allocated based on its share of the population,” he said.

“So this was an opportunity for us to help recover other parts of the state that were not receiving the vaccine.”

State-authorized vaccine centers have so far struggled to inoculate black and Hispanic residents living in CEPs without a health ecosystem, including doctors and pharmacies.

Black and Hispanic Texans died disproportionately from the most serious symptoms of COVID-19. Nationally, blacks and Hispanics are more likely to contract the virus due to their multifamily and generational jobs and homes.

Whoever receives the life-saving doses has become a political failure in Dallas, sparking debates at City Hall and the county administration building. Dallas officials have promised that their Fair Park website, which opened in January, would prioritize black and Hispanic residents living below Interstate 30, a long-established dividing line between race and socioeconomic status in one of the nation’s 10 largest counties.

Dallas and Tarrant officials hoped that the federal government’s new injection surplus would allow them to use separately allocated doses by the state to flood neighborhoods with mobile units and emerging vaccine sites.

Jenkins said the state has in the past received more shots from the feds than it expected.

Federal officials emphasized that FEMA sites should target the most vulnerable groups in the region to coronavirus and hard-to-reach populations.