DALLAS — The City of Dallas and Visiting Nurse Association (VNA) put their program to vaccinate in-home residents on hold after U.S. health officials recommended a “pause” of the single-dose Johnson & Johnson COVID-19 vaccine to investigate reports of potentially dangerous blood clots.
The program was supposed to start Tuesday with Dallas Fire-Rescue administering the Johnson & Johnson vaccine to 70 homebound individuals living in Dallas.
“This was something that happened. We all paused. And now we'll think through what the best next step is to make sure these clients get access to the vaccine,” said Chris Culak, vice president and chief of strategy and development at VNA.
The VNA operates Meals On Wheels, a program that provides prepared meals five days a week to Dallas County residents who cannot obtain or prepare meals for themselves due to illness, advanced age, or disability.
Four hundred of the VNA’s Meals On Wheels clients living in Dallas said they want a COVID-19 vaccine delivered to them, Culak said.
The Johnson & Johnson shot requires one dose unlike Pfizer and Moderna, which require two shots, several weeks apart. This “one and done shot” is, logistically, easier for the VNA to coordinate and schedule for homebound residents. It’s also safer for their clients if strangers only need to go into the homes of these at-risk individuals once.
“The average client’s 70 or older. They have probably three or four chronic health conditions. A lot of them have mobility issues, if not a disability of some kind. Majority of them live alone,” Culak said. “Having us be able to deliver the shot to them is really, I think, the only way they're going to get it.”
Earlier this year, the VNA partnered with the Texas Division of Emergency Management to administer the Moderna vaccine to in-home residents in Dallas County.
“We started in DeSoto and Cedar Hill early February. We have now finished up with Duncanville, DeSoto, Cedar Hill, Lancaster,” Culak said. “People have told us, now they can see grandkids and now they can visit with family members. Now they can talk to neighbors. They haven't done any of those things in a year.”
Culak said he hopes the program will resume in the next week or so. But it’s going to depend on the city, he said.
“They get allocations each week, and so it's about saying, OK, can we have enough vaccines to kick off a homebound operation in the next couple of days? Or does that need to be next week?” Culak said. “We'll just have to wait and see over the next couple of days how that all plays out.”
As far as which vaccine, when, and how much this program will get, the City of Dallas said in a statement that it “will provide more information as it becomes available.”