Dallas County wants to vaccinate 1,000 people an hour. But kinks remain, commissioners say

As thousands of Texans pulled up to the Texas Motor Speedway on Tuesday for the COVID-19 vaccine, Dallas County officials did a little back-seat driving.

Dr. Philip Huang, the county’s health department director, said he hoped to one day soon match Denton County’s extraordinary effort to vaccinate 10,000 people a day. That would include expanding its limited drive-through option at Fair Park.

But county commissioners, eager to see their constituents vaccinated, remained skeptical. Too many problems, several still unresolved, at the county’s Fair Park inoculation site in South Dallas continue to concern them, they said.

“We’ve seen these failures in a low vaccine environment,” said Commissioner J.J. Koch, a Republican who represents northern Dallas County. “The kinks need to be worked out in February.”

Since the county health department’s site opened Jan. 11, it has been plagued by mixed messages, technical problems and logistical snags. Coupled with political brinkmanship, the rollout has left more North Texans frustrated than vaccinated.

And vaccine supply still remains scarce. By the end of the week, 36,000 doses are expected to have been administered at Fair Park, Huang said. That’s an average of about 9,000 a week. The effort underway in Denton County was made possible due to a surplus in vaccines the state sent to both Denton and Collin counties this week.

Commissioner John Wiley Price, a Democrat from southern Dallas County, quipped that the county’s only redeeming quality was that it wasn’t the city. On Monday, Mayor Eric Johnson apologized for long lines. Many residents were turned away at the downtown convention center after they thought they had booked valid appointments for the vaccine.

“Are we going to have a competition for who is worse — the city or the county?” Price asked.

To reset their efforts, county commissioners last week approved hiring a public relations firm to lead community outreach, obtained new reservation and appointment software and contracted a new call center to manage higher than expected phone sign-ups.

Huang said the investment in the new software, which is expected to launch this week, is the first big step toward expediting the process at Fair Park.

The new software, in part, will streamline reservations, creating unique barcodes for each applicant. That should cut down on invalid appointments and time needed for data entry, officials said.

Both Price and Koch pressed Huang on his staffing. Would there be enough people to power such a large operation?

Dallas County Judge Clay Jenkins, who is tasked with emergency management, said the county was seeking bids to hand some of the logistics to a third party as the site grows. The county has also applied to be a federal vaccine hub, which could mean 12,000 shots a day with the help of Federal Emergency Management Agency and the National Guard.

Bigger may not be better, cautioned Commissioner Elba Garcia.

The Democrat, who represents western Dallas County, said accommodations must be made for vulnerable seniors who are unable to make it to Fair Park.

“Seniors are already telling me they’re not going to Fair Park,” she said. “Most seniors do not have internet, do not have computers, they do not have transportation. … They need our help.”

While there is new evidence the health department may finally be establishing some equity in distributing the vaccine to the county’s most vulnerable residents, they are still far from the intended goal.

Recent snapshots shared with the commissioners Tuesday show the county’s northern residents continue to sign up for the vaccine waitlist in greater numbers.

And while the county is sending invitations to a handful of communities with larger Black and Hispanic populations, updated state data shared with the commissioners on Tuesday appear to show a higher concentration of vaccinated residents living north of Interstate 30, which has long split the county by race and wealth.