Texas receiving 200,000 doses of COVID-19 vaccine, mainly for “vaccination centers”

Texas will receive about 200,000 additional doses of the COVID-19 vaccine next week, most of them aimed at large “vaccination centers” capable of vaccinating up to 100,000 people – helping to streamline distribution as the number of eligible Texans increases, officials said. on Thursday.

“These vaccination centers will provide people in these priority populations with identifiable locations where vaccination is taking place and a simpler way to sign up for a consultation with each provider,” the Texas State Department of Health Services said in a statement. in writing.

Authorities warned that even after the next shipment raised the state’s total endowment to 1.7 million since mid-December, the state is still far short of what it needs to vaccinate the millions of Texans currently eligible for the vaccine and that “it will take time “for supply to keep up with demand.

Nearly 1.4 million doses were shipped by the end of Wednesday, according to state figures. The state does not publicly report how many doses providers have received. At least 475,000 Texans received the first dose of the vaccine, and more than 6,500 were fully inoculated with the two required doses, according to state data, although those numbers fall behind in real time due to delays in reporting.

A list of major suppliers identified as hubs will be released later in the week, the agency said.

Most of next week’s batch will go to them, but shipments will also go to some smaller suppliers, the agency said.

Larger centers will be required to set up phone numbers and registration sites and focus their efforts on the affected populations in their neighboring areas, the agency said. They will be instructed to continue vaccinating health professionals, people aged 65 and over, and those with medical conditions that increase the risk.

The news comes as qualified Texans across the state struggle for responses and access to the vaccine after state officials announced in late December that hospitals should start vaccinating people who are elderly and those with underlying diseases, a group known as 1B, who did not qualify in the first round of injections is reserved for healthcare professionals and residents of nursing homes and long-term care facilities, a group known as 1A, if they run out of 1A people who want the injection.

Group 1A includes about 1.9 million people in Texas. Group 1B has about 8 million people, although state officials say that an indeterminate number of people fall into both groups.