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FORT WORTH — Tarrant and Dallas county health authorities received thousands of doses of H1N1 flu vaccine Friday, finally getting enough to begin making it available to the public.
Both counties plan to provide the doses to high-risk groups.Marc Flake, a spokesman for Tarrant County Public Health, said the 3,000 doses the department received, in injectable fluid and nasal mist, will be given to pregnant women and children 6 months to 18 years old. Details of how and when the vaccines will be administered are being worked out and will be announced Monday.Dallas County health officials plan to distribute their 5,700 doses to uninsured people and those who have no doctor, focusing on high-risk groups such as pregnant women, children, and healthcare and emergency medical workers. Getting the vaccine to the public has been slow in the Metroplex and beyond. With the new shipment, Flake said, Tarrant County Public Health has received 4,000 doses. The county has requested 25,000.Healthcare providers in the counties have also received vaccine. In Dallas County, officials said more than 42,000 doses have been distributed as of Friday to 360 medical providers. Among the Tarrant County healthcare providers receiving shipments is Cook Children’s Physician Network, which had received 5,180 doses as of Monday, about 1,000 fewer than it ordered.Federal officials said shipments have been slow partly because drugmakers aren’t producing the vaccine as fast as expected and partly because some states haven’t requested that all their share be immediately shipped.Dr. Thomas Frieden, director of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, addressed the issue Friday during his weekly briefing on the H1N1 pandemic, saying it takes time to grow the viral strand needed to produce the vaccine. "We are now in a period where the availability of the vaccine is increasing steadily, but far too slowly," Frieden said. "It is frustrating to all of us. We wish there were more vaccine available. We need to remember that the enemy here is a virus. It is very challenging to deal with. The tools we have available are not as modern as we would like or as rapid."Frieden said that 16 million doses of the vaccine were available for shipping Friday and that more vaccine will be available in coming weeks."We are nowhere near where we thought we would be by now," Frieden said. "Sixteen million doses is not what we had wanted by this time; it is not what we had predicted by this time, but it is also a significant number."The speed of shipments to Texas has also depended on how many doses the state has asked to be shipped at any given time, said Joe Quimby, a CDC spokesman.Last week, Texas ranked 50th among the states and the District of Columbia in doses shipped per capita. According to numbers released Friday, Texas fared somewhat better. According to the CDC, Texas had been shipped about 831,400 doses, making it the 40th state in doses per capita.
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