Rolling out the COVID-19 vaccine, North Texas has faced one roadblock after another from confusion over registration to delays caused by last week’s deadly winter storm. Now, there’s another hurdle in the way: a cut to the region’s state-provided vaccines.
On Monday, Dallas County Judge Clay Jenkins announced that the Fair Park vaccination site had run out of doses. Texas’ health department had decided to redirect 42,000 shots reserved for Dallas and Tarrant counties to other parts of the state.
This week, Dallas County begins its partnership with the federal government for the county’s 17 most underserved ZIP codes, Jenkins said in a tweet. He hopes the Texas Department of State Health Services will reconsider siphoning doses away from Dallas-Fort Worth.
Dallas County could reach herd immunity for COVID-19 by late June, several weeks earlier than previous projections that suggested late summer or early fall as the earliest date, according to a new analysis by the Parkland Center for Clinical Innovation.
The center is an independent, nonprofit healthcare intelligence organization affiliated with Parkland Health and Hospital System. On Tuesday, it released a statement forecasting an earlier date for when enough of the county s population has gained some immunity from infection, either by previous illness or vaccination, to stop the virus from spreading widely.
“PCCI’s analysis, as of Feb. 22, indicates that the county has already reached 44% of the 2.6 million adult residents of Dallas County as either recovered from COVID-19 or in the process of receiving their full COVID-19 vaccine, the statement says.
‘North Texas should not be punished’: Dallas County judge chides state for cutting COVID vaccines as feds boost local doses
Dallas County’s supply of state doses is getting slashed because it will become a federal vaccine site this week
Judge Clay Jenkins speaks to the media from the post vaccine observation room at the Tower Building at Fair Park in Dallas, Texas on Thursday January 28, 2021. (Lawrence Jenkins / Special Contributor)
The state is penalizing tens of thousands of people waiting for the COVID-19 vaccine after slashing the number of doses it sent to North Texas’ two largest counties, Dallas County Judge Clay Jenkins said Monday.