Vaccine supply struggles continue countywide
Many Bosque County residents have been asking the same question.
“When can I get the vaccine?”
During Monday’s weekly Bosque County Commissioners Court meeting, Bosque County Emergency Coordinator Chris Anderson told commissioners there has not been a steady flow of vaccines in the county in two weeks.
“Although the number of those vaccinated continues to go up each week, no new vaccines have been available in the county,” said Anderson.
Bosque County residents can go anywhere in the country to be vaccinated and those numbers will be accounted for in numbers reported by the Texas DSHS website.
“We have numerous people who work outside the county so they have received the vaccine from some location other than Bosque County,” said Anderson.
Although the single dose vaccine was reported to be on its way, Anderson said it will be at least another month before it’s available to higher populations, and he emphasized that it was his best guess that they wouldn’t hit Bosque County until mid or late summer.
Even though the state has moved into phase 1B of administering the vaccine, Bosque County is still working to inoculate medical staff.
“The last report I got from Goodall-Witcher is everyone at the hospital has been inoculated but we’re still waiting on the nursing homes,” said Anderson.
When talks of vaccines started months ago, Anderson said county officials were assured that even though Bosque County is a rural community with a lower population and a lower active case rate, they would not be at the lower end of the totem pole when it came to who would receive vaccines first.
“We were assured we would have the same consideration from day one and that has not happened,” said Anderson. “Everything I have tried to get more vaccines into the county has failed so far.”
Bosque County commissioners are looking to taking a more handson approach to increasing the supply of COVID-19 vaccines in the county.
“One of the things we were told is if you were sent 1000 doses and you only administer 500, you’re sitting on 500 doses,” said Bosque County Commissioner- Precinct 1 Billy Hall.
“The state is looking at that very carefully, saying maybe we only need 500 doses instead of 1000. So if we get 1000 doses, we need to administer them so when we go back for another order they can look and see we pushed 1000 doses out really fast and need more,” said Hall.
“We’re nine deaths away from Coronavirus killing 1 out of about 500 people in the county, and I’m about ready to throw that number at somebody,” said Bosque County Commissioner- Precinct 4 Ronny Liardon.
As of Monday at 2:15 p.m., Texas DSHS reported 1,252 confirmed cases of COVID-19 in Bosque County. 297 of those cases remain active while 1,199 have recovered. The death toll rose to 27 in the county.
DSHS also reported 1,082 residents have received the first dose of the COVID-19 vaccine and 287 have been fully inoculated.
As of Monday morning, Goodall-Witcher Healthcare reported 7,253 individuals had been tested for COVID-19. 5,115 of those tests came back negative while 898 were positive. Zero cases were pending.
A Meridian Elementary student tested positive for COVID-19 and was last on campus on Feb. 2. Individuals believed to have close contact with the student have been notified and MISD is continuing to monitor the situation.