Next in line for the vaccine

Attention will shift to more vulnerable populations.

Texans who are 65 years old and older, and those who are at least 16 with certain chronic medical conditions will be next in line for the COVID-19 vaccine, the Texas Department of State Health Services announced Monday.

“The focus on people who are age 65 and older or who have comorbidities will protect the most vulnerable populations,” said Imelda Garcia, chair of the state Expert Vaccine Allocation Panel and DSHS associate commissioner for laboratory and infectious diseases. “This approach ensures that Texans at the most severe risk from COVID-19 can be protected across races and ethnicities and regardless of where they work.”

The vaccine, which arrived in Texas on Dec. 14, has been available so far only to front-line health care workers and residents of long-term care facilities. There are nearly 1.9 million Texans in that group, so it will likely take a few weeks before the state transitions to the next phase, state health officials said.

The state expects to receive 1.4 million vaccine doses by the end of the month. Eligible facilities under the current phase include hospitals, pharmacies, nursing homes and Texas Department of Criminal Justices facilities.

The city of Houston will also receive 6,000 doses that are ticketed for firefighters and health care workers, so that’s good. A list of comorbidities that would get you onto the eligible list for the vaccine is in the article, so click over and check it out if you think this may apply to you or someone you know. But do keep in mind that bit about it taking a few weeks to transition into that next phase, because it will take awhile to get through the first phase. We need to continue to practice prevention so as not to sicken and kill many more people needlessly.

Indeed, for those of us in Houston, the next few weeks are looking rough.

The spread of COVID-19, steadily increasing in Houston and Texas since the beginning of November, is expected to accelerate in coming weeks, according to the latest modeling, a trajectory that could make the city and state one of the nation’s next hot spots.

The models project COVID-19 numbers — cases, hospitalizations, deaths — to continue rising in Houston and many other parts of Texas before likely peaking sometime in January. Parts of the state at crisis levels the past month have peaked.

“There’s a lot of concern about the Houston area as we enter the Christmas season,” said David Rubin, a pediatrician and director of The Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia’s PolicyLab, which produces one of the models. “If I were to say what areas in the country still have the potential to surge, the Houston area definitely would be one of them.”

Rubin and others urged everyone to hunker down over the coming holiday period in an attempt to limit the damage from the coronavirus’ seeming last onslought before gradually deployed vaccines can begin to shut down the pandemic. He noted widespread deployment won’t be in time to affect Houston’s winter peak.

[…]

“What’s concerning is that so many regions of Texas look to be hit about the same time,” said Spencer Fox, associate director of the UT COVID-19 Modeling Consortium. “It’s a sad trend at a time when the vaccines are almost within reach.”

The Houston-area trends are worrisome in two of the models. Fox’s group projects 2,121 COVID-19 hospitalizations in the area on Jan. 15, for instance, an increase of 36 percent over the 1,561 such admissions for Dec. 17.

In addition, the CHOP PolicyLab modeling shows the number of Harris County COVID-19 cases should nearly double by the end of the first week of January. The model projects 2,919 cases on Jan. 7, up from 1,478 on Dec. 14.

A third forecast, by the University of Washington’s Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME), projects the number of deaths in Texas will peak Jan. 5 at 292. The model, the only one of the three that projects more than a few weeks out, says daily deaths would total 280 on that date assuming universal mask wearing but reach 345 by late January if mandates are eased.

Thanks partly to the vaccines, the IHME model projects the number of daily Texas deaths will decrease dramatically after the Jan. 5 peak — 138 on Feb. 1, 55 on March 1 and 17 on April 1. The vaccine’s most immediate effect is expected to be more of reducing severe illness and deaths than cases.

The IHME model does not project past April.

In all, 28,134 COVID-19 Texas deaths are expected as of Dec. 31, according to the IHME model. All but 2,700 of those came after June 30.

“That’s a devastating loss of lives in just a six-month period,” said Dr. Peter Hotez, a Baylor College of Medicine infectious disease specialist and vaccine scientist. “Has Texas ever lost so many lives in such a short time?”

The CHOP PolicyLab foresaw the June/July spike, though they were more alarmist than the situation turned out to be. But between the holidays and the colder weather that makes outdoor dining less feasible, the conditions are certainly there for an uptick. We all know what to do about this, it’s just on us to actually do it.

Related Posts:

This entry was posted in The great state of Texas and tagged , , , , , , , , , . Bookmark the permalink.

5 Responses to Next in line for the vaccine

  1. Manny says:

    While I have my doubts about the vaccine the best thing to do to help my fellow Americans is to take the Vaccine and to encourage everyone to do likewise. We should also consider making all those small businesses that have lost everything or almost everything, whole again. They have been asked to sacrifice for the good of the country while most of us did not have anywhere as much skin in the game. The government took property and their lively hood away from them.

  2. Manny says:

    livelihood

  3. Henry Brown says:

    I am a 78 year old with stage 4 COPD who lives in far northern Harris county, My primary care physician office is The Woodlands. Got a nice email from their corporate offices saying “I would have to call Houston Medical Center and get in line for my vaccine. which means I am competing with well over 300,000 people not to mention how many of patients in Montgomery county who use the doctors in Montgomery Count

  4. Jen says:

    Henry- Just because you have a doctor doesn’t mean you cannot use a local pharmacy that offers the vaccine when it becomes available. In am in no way a medical person, but my understanding is that once a vial is opened it must be used fairly quickly, so 5-10 people must be in line for each vial. So you must make an appointment so they know they have the right number ready.
    Getting a shot at the grocery store pharmacy is a bit odd but for convenience it cannot be beat. No hair-raising rocket ride down I-45, no expensive parking nightmare, no elevators.

    This KHOU story has a link to a map that shows two HEB pharmacies in Conroe that have the vaccine, at least for the first group (Tier 1a). I imagine they will be getting more soon for the 1b tier.
    https://www.khou.com/article/news/health/coronavirus/vaccine/texas-covid-19-vaccine-near-me/285-3e4e9294-d29a-4e10-ad17-d0bfa6616bb2

  5. Jen says:

    Corrections: HEB pharmacies in Spring. (I am not a medical person).

Comments are closed.