DALLAS (WBAP/KLIF) – The Texas Department of State Health Services said Tuesday that it has reduced the number of COVID-19 vaccine doses to Dallas and Tarrant County due to the arrival of Federal vaccination sites in the region.
“When you include the doses going to the FEMA sites, Dallas County providers are receiving 45,690 first doses this week compared with 43,325 last week,” DSHS Spokesman Chris Van Deusen told WBAP/KLIF. “For Tarrant County, it’s 37,870 compared with 27,950 last week.”
Van Deusen said that in many cases, providers still have vaccine from last week that wasn’t used or was shipped late by the CDC due to the weather.
“One of the guiding principles of the Expert Vaccine Allocation Panel is allocating vaccine equitably across the state, and with a FEMA windfall of more than 84,000 doses going to just three counties, EVAP recommended sending additional doses to parts of the state that haven’t received nearly as much vaccine per person,” he said. “This allowed us to allocate vaccine to 230 counties for this week, the most of any week so far.”
DSHS said that vaccine allocation decisions are made week by week, and that it gets guidance from the Expert Vaccination Allocation Panel each week.
Local leaders are frustrated by reduction in state doses.
“The first week’s allocation was cut back by 9,000 at Public Health and 7,000 in Arlington so those to entities were cut back by 16,000 vaccines,” said Tarrant County Judge Glen Whitley. “[This] is something we were assured would not happen.”
The hope of local leaders was that the consistent shipment of state and federal vaccine doses would significantly boost the availability of vaccine in North Texas.
Dallas County Judge Clay Jenkins said that the Federal doses are intended for the most underserved populations.
“The people of North Texas who are not in these underserved zip codes should not be punished because he hustled and got vaccines for people in those zip codes,” said Judge Jenkins. This should be a win-win for everyone. Instead, the Governor has taken vaccines away from everyone else.”
Van Deusen said allocations are made every week and decisions could change based on statewide circumstances and availability of vaccine.
Federal vaccination sites at Fair Park and Globe Life Field are expected to open later this week.
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