Austin Public Health provided 18,427 vaccines to the Austin County and Travis community on Thursday, according to APH director Stephanie Hayden-Howard.
But one thing is certain, she said during a news conference, APH does not have enough doses for everyone at the moment.
“We are asking you to be patient with us,” she said.
Hayden-Howard said that APH received only 1% of the doses needed to vaccinate the community. She said there are 129,438 people in Austin-Travis County alone aged 65 and over, an age group eligible to be vaccinated now.
And while people rush to sign up for one of those limited doses, APH’s phone lines and other COVID-related operations are overloaded, said chief epidemiologist Janet Pichette.
“Austin and Travis County have reached a point in our community where we hit the perfect storm,” she said. “We are in the midst of a sudden increase in all of our operations related to the COVID-19 response.”
Pichette said the city’s facilities for people who need a place to securely isolate themselves to prevent their family members from getting sick are almost full. The alternative care facility at the Austin Convention Center now has 25 patients. APH is also seeing an increase in demand for tests now, she said.
But the cases appear to be flattening, said Dr. Mark Escott, Austin-Travis County’s interim health authority.
“We’ve done a great job in the past few weeks flattening the curve,” he said. “The curve continues to flatten out. We are seeing some decline in our hospitalization numbers and our ICU numbers, so what you are doing is working. “
The community cannot stop here, however, he said. People should continue to wear masks and social distance.
“We have to continue these protections and be vigilant so that we can reduce the numbers and give us more time for the vaccine to be available and put it in the arms of our community,” he said.
Watch the press conference below:
Coronavirus in Austin, Texas: Austin leaders answer questions from COVID-19 amid vaccine launch | KVUE
The state has split its federal government allocations to vaccine suppliers across Texas. Last week, the Texas State Department of Health Services began allocating thousands of large-scale providers, called “vaccine centers”. APH is one of them. 24,000 vaccines have been distributed in the past two weeks. Smaller providers are only getting a few hundred vaccines a week now.
As a public health entity, APH says its focus is on people who do not have health insurance or another provider at their disposal. But that does not mean that people with health insurance are unable to enroll on the APH waiting list, Escott clarified on Friday. He said his advice for those eligible for the vaccine is to sign up for any waiting lists they might find to increase their chances of getting an injection.
“Just as we did with the tests, we would like to remind people that if they have the means to get the vaccine or get tested elsewhere than Austin Public Health, it helps to reserve vaccine resources for those who have no other vaccines. options, ”he said. “But certainly people with insurance can apply, and we will provide the vaccine in the best possible way to those who apply.”
Vaccines authorized for use in the US now require two doses for full protection. Escott said he expects APH to be able to provide the second dose to those who received the first dose of APH in a timely manner.
“Part of the challenge we have … is that we don’t have a shipping order saying it will arrive on this date,” he said. “We are confident that the state and federal governments will deliver what they say they will deliver.”
According to state guidance, APH and other vaccine providers are prioritizing people aged 65 and over and those with underlying medical conditions that put them at a higher risk of complications from COVID-19. Escott said the reason behind this is that these groups are the most likely to be hospitalized and the most likely to die from the virus. Gaining immunity within these groups will help eliminate the threat to currently overburdened hospital systems.
“I think it is reasonable that in the period of March, perhaps April, as we go through the group that is most at risk of hospitalization, that the threat of overloading the health system can be largely resolved,” said Escott.
This does not mean that the community can relax precautions, he clarified. People under the age of 65 can still develop complications from COVID and stress hospital systems.
“But this can be managed through masking and detachment throughout June, in order to give us more time to vaccinate others,” he said. “So, again, I hope that around the period from March to April we begin to see a very different picture in terms of the threat to our infrastructure and the threat to our health system.”
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