COVID-19 Vaccination Efforts Reaching More Texans, Health Officials Say
By Sean Price

COVID-19_Vaccine_Distribution_Meeting

COVID-19 vaccination efforts are gaining ground in Texas and will continue to improve, but an ongoing shortage of doses hampers the state’s efforts to vaccinate nearly 30 million residents, the state’s top public health official told the Texas Medical Association’s Winter Conference Saturday.

“The biggest problem – and keep it in mind because it affects everything – is that we don’t have enough supply to meet demand,” John Hellerstedt, MD, commissioner of the Texas Department of State Health Services (DSHS), told physicians at TMA’s first-ever Winter Conference. “We could easily absorb two, three, four times as much vaccine.”

Dr. Hellerstedt addressed the audience with John Zerwas, MD, executive vice chancellor for health affairs for The University of Texas System. Both advise Gov. Greg Abbott on COVID-19, and Dr. Zerwas sits on the 17-member committee that determines how vaccines are distributed in Texas.

The conference also included a panel of key physician leaders and a state senator discussing medicine’s priorities in both Austin and Washington, D.C. 

Improved efficiency 

Vaccine distribution is getting efficient on several fronts, including the quality of information from the U.S. government on how many doses are coming to the states, Dr. Hellerstedt said.

President [Joe] Biden’s administration is doing its very best to give us a reliable forecast three weeks in advance so that we can plan out the vaccine distribution,” he said.

Previously, DSHS had only one or two days’ notice from federal officials before staff had to allocate vaccine doses across the state, Dr. Hellerstedt said.

In January, DSHS recently established large vaccination sites called “hubs” statewide to improve vaccine distribution. These hubs, most of which are run by hospitals or local public health entities, have improved the flow of vaccines, Dr. Hellerstedt said.

“We’re up to about 2 million vaccines administered now [in Texas],” Dr. Hellerstedt said. “It took us about four and a half weeks to get the first million. It took us about two weeks to get the second million. So we’re really on a roll.”

The 17-member committee that coordinates distribution debated the order in which people should be vaccinated, Dr. Zerwas said. The first group, labeled Phase 1A, is made up of health care workers and those in long-term care facilities. The committee’s decision on who to include in Phase 1A was easy because it mainly protected the physicians and health care workers needed to combat the pandemic, Dr. Zerwas said.

However, committee members – like their counterparts in the U.S. government and other states – had trouble deciding who should be included in Phase 1B, he said.

“For a while we went down the road of defining who was more essential than others,” he said. “Where do teachers fall? Where do legislators fall? Where do transportation workers fall or electrical workers fall? And it became clear to us that the thing that was most important to do was to follow the epidemiology. … Who’s dying and getting really sick with this disease? It’s people over 65 and those who have some concomitant disease.”

As a result, the committee agreed that Phase 1B should be made up of people over 65 or with a chronic medical condition that puts them at increased risk for severe illness from COVID-19.

Focusing on epidemiology targeted the workers who are most vulnerable to the disease as well as people in the ethnic and racial groups who have shown the highest risk of severe complications from COVID-19, especially Blacks and Latinos, Dr. Zerwas said.

“These are the people getting really sick, and these are the people who are dying more than anybody else out there,” he said.

The state also made extra resources a priority to ensure hospitals were not overwhelmed. Dr. Zerwas added.  For instance, DSHS and the Texas Division of Emergency Management have provided supplies, manpower, and medical tents that serve as alternative health care sites to the regions hardest hit by the pandemic.

“The vast, vast majority of care was given in the hospital and almost all the intensive care was accomplished within the four walls of a hospital,” he said. “It wasn’t pretty, but it was all there… If [physicians] needed an X-ray, you could get an X-ray. If you needed a blood test done, you could get it done immediately.”

Earlier on Saturday, the TMA Board of Trustees honored Drs. Hellerstedt and Zerwas with the TMA President’s Award for outstanding leadership during the COVID-19 crisis. The award also was shared by DSHS Infectious Disease Medical Officer Jennifer Shuford, MD; Texas State Board of Education member Matthew Robinson, MD; and Texas Division of Emergency Management Chief W. Nim Kidd.

Last Updated On

February 01, 2021

Originally Published On

February 01, 2021

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