Thousands get their COVID-19 shots as Texas Motor Speedway vaccine hub opens with 10,000 doses

The race for the COVID-19 vaccines came to Texas Motor Speedway at daybreak Tuesday as thousands of people lined up to get shots.

With 10,000 doses ready to go, Denton County officials said the 16-lane megasite was one of the nation’s largest vaccine hubs. (Although, leave it to Californians to do their best to one-up us: A site at Los Angeles’ Dodger Stadium was set up in January to administer 12,000 doses daily, though a shortage of supply has allowed for an average of only 7,000 shots a day.)

People lined up in pickups and small cars. Some brought their family members and pets along, while others came alone and received their shots through their driver’s side window.

Unlike the scenes at some mass testing centers that were beset with organizational and scheduling problems early in the pandemic, the mood was light at the speedway Tuesday morning. Smiling eyes peeked over face masks as patients honked and cheered when they approached one of the tents where shots were being administered.

LaDonna Gatlin Johnson of Frisco arrived early for her morning appointment. She didn’t want to lose her spot, not just for her sake but for her husband’s, too. In December, they learned he had pancreatic cancer. He was also supposed to get a shot Tuesday morning but had a conflict: He had to report at 8 a.m. for his first round of chemotherapy.

Johnson will be a caregiver for her husband, so she wanted to be sure to get vaccinated so she wouldn’t get him sick. Alone in the car, before she drove to meet her husband at his appointment, she began to cry.

“Everybody’s been frustrated, but let me tell you, it’s beauty in motion here,” she said. “This is like a military operation, and it makes me proud to be a Texan and proud to be an American.”

As she pulled out of the vaccination tent, she rolled down her window and waved at one of the volunteers who were directing traffic.

“Thank you,” she shouted. “God bless you.”

“Congratulations on your vaccine!” Matt Mueller of Little Elm yelled back.

The state announced last week that it would deliver 31,500 doses of the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines to Denton County.

To scale up the county’s vaccination efforts, county commissioners dug up a plan developed for the H1N1 virus, Commissioner Dianne Edmondson said.

Texas Motor Speedway’s 131 acres allowed patients and medical providers to spread out, and three rows of drive-through tents were set up: for check-ins, medical screenings and vaccinations.

The massive parking lots surrounding the speedway allowed plenty of room for people to wait 15 or 30 minutes in their vehicles to be sure there were no adverse reactions before departing.

Only people with appointments with Denton County Public Health can get immunizations at the hub, and the county is vaccinating only groups 1A and 1B — direct care medical providers, people in long-term care facilities, people over 65 years old and people with a chronic medical condition. Eligible people may sign up online for the waiting list, which had more than 160,000 names on it as of Sunday.

The county may learn soon how many doses it will receive next week. For now, officials hope to administer the current supply over three days this week at the speedway, and they seemed to be well on their way to achieving that goal. By 8 a.m. Tuesday, only a half-hour after the gates opened, more than 630 doses had been given by the over 400 volunteers and staff members on site. By 9 a.m., they’d already given 1,500 doses.

Denton County Public Health spokeswoman Jennifer Rainey said about 6:30 p.m. that officials were still working on finalizing the total but had administered 9,100 doses as of their most recent tally.

The site will be open at 7:30 a.m. Thursday and Friday. Officials decided to skip Wednesday to allow time to make any needed adjustments to the plan after the first day.

“It’s the light at the end of the pandemic tunnel,” said Matt Richardson, Denton County’s director of public health. “We want to put as many needles in arms as possible.”

Although people had been urged to arrive at their scheduled appointment time, early arrivals caused the lines for vaccinations to stretch across the parking lot Tuesday morning. But by midday, the crowds had dissipated.

“This isn’t like the airport, where you need to be here an hour before,” Richardson said.

For Pete and Tom Kelly of Denton, getting their shots was a family event. In the back seat of their blue Prius were their two Labradors, Atlas and Chance, who stuck their heads out to greet the Denton County staff, which was ready with iPads to register patients and administer the Moderna vaccine.

“It’s like a big sigh of relief,” Pete Kelly said. “This kind of gives you a little bit of confirmation that the end will be in sight soon.”