AUSTIN, Texas — On Tuesday, the Texas Department of State Health Services announced people in group 1B could start getting vaccinated for COVID-19. Confusion followed.
"There is a little bit of a misunderstanding that the vaccine is not been used," Dr. Anas Daghestani, the CEO of Austin Regional Clinic, said. "We are trying to work as hard as possible to get every dose of the vaccine out."
When the schedule for vaccination allocation was first released, Texas had nearly 1.6 million health care workers who qualified to receive it first. Since the first arrival of the Pfizer vaccine, Texas has received a little more than 670,000 doses.
"We have the capacity right now to vaccinate about 750 to 1,000 a day," Daghestani said. "We're working very diligently to increase that capacity and we're hopeful as we clear the backlog of our firefighters, EMS workers, first responders and health care workers, over the next few days, we will slowly start to expanding to those over 65 and those with complex medical conditions."
Daghestani said if ARC receives more vials of the COVID-19 vaccine, they will be able to start vaccinating the next group. As it stands the day before New Year's Eve, ARC has the rest of its vaccines scheduled to be administered over the next seven to 10 days.
At Huntsville Family Medicine in Walker County, just north of Houston, Dr. Lane Aiena plans to start vaccinating the 1B group on Thursday.
"Walker County as a whole has been behind," Aiena said. "It's a little tricky. You have to get 10 people lined up to do it, and once you pop that vaccine, you have six hours to get it allocated. So what we've done is we've put together a waiting list and we call people about 10 at a time."
Aiena said his waitlist is already nearly full. He has enough vaccine left over from administering it to his staff to give about 250 people their first dose of the Moderna COVID-19 vaccine.
Aiena admits vaccination has not gone as quickly as anticipated across Texas.
"We are not vaccinating as quickly as we thought we would be able to," Aiena said. "We're also running a full clinic. We're also seeing patients. We're also servicing our community. On top of that, we're trying to do the vaccine and get it logged into the state systems as they've requested. So we're doing it as quickly as we can. And that's what we are: the limiting reagent in that that means, so to speak."
Despite the confusion, both Aiena and Daghestani say they're glad DSHS announced people within Phase 1B can start getting vaccinated.
"It's a lot easier for me to get 10 people from 65 and older than it is 10 people from the medical community," Aiena said.
"The biggest objective for all of us is to get as much of the vaccine out on the street and used as possible, but within a limitation of the resources and the vaccine," Daghestani said.
For a full list of who qualifies for the vaccine, DSHS has a list on its website. For locations on where the most recent vaccine was shipped to start the week, DSHS has a list here.
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