After 7 weeks, here’s how many Tarrant residents have been vaccinated against COVID
Just over 1% of Tarrant County residents have been fully vaccinated against COVID-19 about seven weeks into vaccination efforts.
About 112,000 people in the county have received at least one of the two shots needed to be fully vaccinated against the coronavirus, according to the Texas Department of State Health Services. That translates to 7% of residents 16 and older.
About 21,000 of Tarrant County’s estimated 1.7 million people 16 and older have gotten both shots. A vaccine has not been a approved for children under 16.
“I think what we’re seeing so far, the data is telling us, is we’ve got a long, long way to go,” said John Carlo, the CEO of Prism Health North Texas.
In the state’s 15 most populous counties, between roughly 1% and 3% of people over the age of 16 have received both of their shots. Providers are working to vaccinate health care workers, nursing home residents, those 65 and older and people with health conditions.
Tarrant is also on par with some of Texas’ most populous counties when it comes to the percentage of residents who’ve received at least one dose. In Harris and Bexar Counties, 8% of those 16 and older have received at least one shot compared to 7% in Dallas and Travis Counties.
But comparing counties is tricky business.
“There’s probably a lot of week-to-week fluctuation based on … how the supplies are going,” Carlo said. “It’s kind of hard to judge, you know overall, if anybody’s kind of pulling out in front of the other at this point.”
Statewide, 8% of people 16 and older have gotten at least one shot and 2% are fully vaccinated. That amounts to nearly 2 million people having received at least one dose and nearly 500,000 people fully vaccinated.
Carlo, who’s also a member of the Texas Medical Association’s COVID-19 task force, would like to see closer to 90% vaccinated by the end of the campaign.
Nationwide, about 6 million people are fully vaccinated, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and 26 million have received at least one dose.
Barriers to widespread distribution include the number of doses available and the logistics involved with reaching a large number of people dispersed across the state, Carlo said.
Imelda Garcia, chair of Texas’ Expert Vaccine Allocation Panel, called the state’s vaccination efforts a “remarkable accomplishment.”
“It had taken providers in Texas four-and-a-half weeks to record the first million doses, and exactly two weeks later we hit our second million,” she told reporters in a recent call.
Texas is expecting a 30% increase in the number of Moderna vaccines this week as well nearly 126,800 additional Pfizer vaccines that had been set aside for a federal program aimed at vaccinating nursing home residents.
Doses are also expected to increase as new vaccines are authorized for use.
It is unclear when doses will be opened up for the state’s next phase and who will be included in the group. Garcia said conversations have already begun to determine who’s next in line.
“What we’re looking at is the data, first and foremost,” Garcia said.
This story was originally published February 1, 2021 at 5:46 PM.
