‘We had to go big.’ Denton giving out 10,000 vaccines a day at Texas Motor Speedway
It took only a few seconds for a healthcare worker to find a good spot on 75-year-old Diane Hall’s arm on Tuesday morning and insert a needle, delivering her the first of two coronavirus vaccines. But the experience left her on the verge of crying in her car.
She and her husband, Ted Hall, 77, left their home in Ponder a little after 8 a.m. to drive to the Texas Motor Speedway off of I-35W, where Denton County kicked off a massive three-day campaign to give out 31,000 Moderna and Pfizer vaccines from the state. The couple have seen family members get sick with COVID-19 over the last year, and known acquaintances to die of the virus. They have kept painful distance from four children, 10 grandchildren and six great-grandchildren.
Before Diane received her shot, underneath a large white tent covering 16 lanes of vehicles, she said it felt historic, like when she got the polio vaccine as a child in the mid-1950s.
On the other side of the tent, she was overcome with emotion as she and Ted waited the required 15 minutes.
“I’m almost crying with relief,” Diane said, sitting in the backseat and speaking through the open window. “It’s like a whole new world is opening up. The old world.”
Ted, who sat in the driver’s seat with their puppy on his lap, told the Star-Telegram, “This pandemic is real. This is amazing, what they’re doing.”
Denton County partnered with the Fort Worth race track to host the by-appointment-only event that officials believe is the largest in the state, and even the U.S. The thousands who showed up Tuesday were either essential healthcare workers or those who are 65 or above or have qualifying pre-existing conditions, the two groups — 1A and 1B — that make up the first wave of vaccinations under Centers for Disease Control guidelines.
While the first days of some mass vaccination sites across the country have been marred by confusion or chaos, the Texas Motor Speedway site was fairly calm and complaint-free on Tuesday. As of 3 p.m., 7,761 people had gotten their vaccines, Denton County spokesperson Dawn Cobb told the Star-Telegram. The county hopes to vaccinate around 10,000 people a day.
Those who got a shot had to have an appointment time, secured through the Denton County Public Health Department’s vaccine portal. Eligible individuals, whether they’re from Denton or another county, can sign up and then receive their number on the waiting list. Over the coming weeks, people will receive emailed updates on when it will be their time.
More than 160,000 people have so far signed up on the Denton County Health Department’s vaccine portal to get their shot, according to County Commissioner Dianne Edmondson, of Precinct 4. The county has hosted vaccination events over the past six weeks in smaller venues like churches, having received shipments from the state that contained a few thousand doses at a time.
Officials learned last week they would be receiving 31,000 doses for week seven, Edmondson said while standing in the speedway parking lot.
“We knew we had to go big,” she said. “We don’t know if we’ll ever have 31,000 doses at one time again.”
Before the site opened at 7:30 a.m. Tuesday, a line of cars extended from the tent with the vaccines through the parking lot, spilling into the streets. There was some congestion in the first hour, with vehicles slowly inching forward, but after that there was little or no wait time.
The final appointment time each day is at 4:30 p.m.
‘Hopefully we can get through this’
The mass vaccination campaign comes as President Joe Biden has vowed in recent days to ramp up federal vaccine efforts, and after Gov. Greg Abbott spoke of expanding efforts in his State of the State address Monday night. The U.S. is additionally dealing with emerging variants of the virus that are more contagious and show varying levels of resistance to the approved vaccines.
Swami Vembu, 41, and his wife, Ash Sairan, 38, who drove from Frisco for their appointment at the speedway, have been closely following the vaccine news. She lives with asthma while he lives with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, or COPD. They have two kids, a 7-year-old girl and 3-year-old boy. The 7-year-old also has asthma.
The parents have been working from home and staying in as much as possible during the pandemic, and that’s what they plan on doing until they get their second doses. Still, they said, getting the first shot was something they felt they had been waiting a long time for.
Vembu said it was a “huge deal” to him, noting that research has so far indicated the vaccines offer protection from the harshest COVID symptoms, regardless of the strain.
“I have been hospitalized multiple times in the past just because of the asthma and COPD, so it’s difficult to imagine what were to happen if this were to hit,” Vembu said. “I know what it’s like breathing hard.”
Christine Shelton, a 59-year-old from Lewisville with diabetes, acknowledged she was unsure whether she wanted to get the COVID vaccine right away or wait for more research to come in. Shelton, who is Black, said there has been some skepticism in the African-American community, based on history.
She and her 61-year-old husband, Michael Hooper, who has high blood pressure, decided in the end they wanted to be better safe than sorry and also to push the U.S. toward being a safer place for everyone.
“If we continue to take the shots, mask up and try to still social distance, hopefully we can get through this,” she said. “So we’re excited.”
This story was originally published February 2, 2021 at 4:43 PM.
