DALLAS — On Monday, WFAA reached out to county leaders and asked how the COVID-19 vaccine rollout is going.
Here’s what they had to say:
Dallas County:
Dallas County Health and Human Services told WFAA their department has only received 1,200 total doses so far, but they are expecting another allotment sometime this week.
“It's a fast-evolving process. You can't expect it to go perfectly,” Dallas County Judge Clay Jenkins said.
The hope is that there will be even more.
“I asked, yesterday in a conference with the state's public health director, for more,” Jenkins said. “What they told me is that next week, they're going to start getting us 2,000 a day. So that's going to help a lot.”
Denton County:
Residents cannot register online for a vaccine as of Monday. There’s a message on the website that says, “Capacity currently met.”
A county spokesperson sent WFAA the following statement: “We are anxiously awaiting additional vaccine from DSHS, so we can continue to offer public vaccine clinics for our community members. For registration, once we receive additional vaccine allocation, we will reopen registration for community members in 1A and 1B. We’re also working on an online solution for a pre-registration/waitlist, and hope to have that live very soon.”
Collin County:
During the weekly county commissioners’ meeting, county health officials said they expect to roll out the county’s online waitlist “early tomorrow morning.”
The county's health department said they have received 1,000 doses and that they have all been allocated to people in groups 1A and 1B.
Collin County Judge Chris Hill said during the county commissioners’ meeting that over 850 of those 1,000 doses will have been administered by the county's health department by the end of Monday.
During the meeting, Hill also said he wanted to make a clarification: “The Collin County Health Department is not a health care provider. It is a public health department. We don’t have a public hospital in Collin County, like they do in others. The plan for Collin County, determined by the state, is the same plan for all counties in the state: That we’re using private health care providers to get the vaccine out."
Tarrant County:
Some Tarrant County residents stood in long lines, waiting to get their vaccines Monday.
“People have the appointments, but they're not coming at the times that we suggested, and so we've got another long line of people out at the resource connection,” Tarrant County Judge Glen Whitley said.
In a tweet Monday, Tarrant County Public Health is asking residents to "arrive on time" for your COVID-19 vaccine appointment, in order to help prevent long lines.
Whitley told WFAA Monday he submitted a proposal to the Texas Division of Emergency Management about setting up multiple mass vaccine sites within the county.
He’s hoping to get more distribution sites open soon.
“It's probably going to be in Hurst, but we’ve got to work out those final details. So the goal would be to have another three or four centers in the next two to three weeks that would open up,” Whitley said.