It’s a go for weekly COVID-19 vaccinations at Texas Motor Speedway

Texas Motor Speedway is taking a victory lap.

One week after the racetrack’s widely lauded three-day mega center disbursed 27,700 COVID-19 vaccines, the site will likely be a weekly distribution hub, said Dawn Cobb, director of community relations for Denton County.

“We see weekly clinics for the foreseeable future,” Cobb said Monday.

Tuesday’s appointments at the 16-lane drive-through clinic run from 9:30 a.m. to 5 p.m. But Cobb said the hours have been adjusted for Thursday (noon to 5 p.m.) and Friday (7:30 a.m. to 5 p.m.) in case of inclement weather.

“We are touching base with the National Weather Service twice daily,” she said. As of Monday night, she said the forecast Thursday morning could include ice or sleet.

“We don’t want people to go out on icy roads,” she said. “If we have to cancel, we’ll send automatic information to individuals.”

The racetrack and Denton County officials have hand warmers and heating stations so that the 400 volunteers who are not underneath tents will be warm during 15-minute breaks.

The success of the mega site stands in contrast to the Fair Park vaccine hub in Dallas County, which again suffered from logistical problems Monday when cars backed up for hours in South Dallas.

Officials were unsure what caused the midafternoon bottleneck. One possibility was that a larger-than-expected number of residents returned for their second dose. The county is planning to give out second doses to about 12,000 people this week, the largest bloc yet, but is not offering specific appointments for second shots.

A date and time is suggested for the vaccinated to return, but residents have wide discretion. The lack of specificity has generated confusion among North Texans, who have navigated a deluge of public-policy changes around the vaccine. To help process those lined up for shots, the county opened additional lanes in its new drive-up model, which was expected to open Tuesday with 12.

”I’m sorry the lines at Fair Park are so long today,” Dallas County Judge Clay Jenkins tweeted Monday. “We are all hands on deck trying to speed it up.”

Cobb said she believes Denton County’s success last week has to do with how the county has organized its overall effort.

“One of the things that we’ve tried to do at the beginning was plan each step [and] not to go outside the county, except for software,” Cobb said. “We look at it from the angle of making it as easy as possible for our residents to get the vaccine and other people from outside the county. That’s just been our perspective.”

To that end, this week’s schedule has been tightly choreographed. On Tuesday, the county plans to distribute 7,400 Pfizer doses from last week’s allocation. Many people canceled or didn’t show up for appointments, Cobb said, which accounts for the extra doses. In addition, 500 second-dose Moderna shots will be given.

As of Monday afternoon, there were 215,979 people on the Denton County waitlist.

On Thursday, 5,000 second doses of the Moderna shot will be delivered, followed by this week’s allotment of Pfizer vaccines from the state on Friday, Cobb said.

“They saw that we had the bandwidth to handle this,” she said. “We’ve been able to show a consistent ability to continue to handle the opportunity.”

On Monday, Gov. Greg Abbott said the state is working with the Federal Emergency Management Agency to create vaccination “super sites,” probably in Dallas and Houston, that would receive 5,000 to 6,000 additional vaccines a day, seven days a week, for eight weeks. No additional details were available.