(Seguin) — Although there is still no immediate word on the arrival of a massive dosage of the COVID-19 vaccine in Guadalupe County, officials say they are ready to roll out those vaccines once they do arrive.
Patrick Pinder, the Guadalupe County emergency management coordinator, not only updated the Guadalupe County Commissioners Court on its immediate plan to administer those vaccines but he shared more about the vaccines themselves and what people may expect as we move forward
in the days ahead. Pinder says the county has been steadily working to solidify a plan – a plan that can be implemented within a minute’s notice.
“I just wanted to touch base on some of the things that we’ve been working on at the emergency management office. So, we’ve been working with GRMC, the city of Seguin, city of Schertz, city of Cibolo and city of New Braunfels to develop a mass vaccination plan. Last week, we met with the hospital for over two hours. We have another meeting today just to finalize the details of the plan. The intent of this plan is to present to the Department of State Health
Services that Guadalupe County and all the collaboration with these jurisdictions and also with Comal County, we are ready for the vaccine. Give it to us like you have given it to Bexar County. We want to show face to the state that if you give us 10,000, 20,000 doses, we can put that out at 1,000 doses a day into people’s arms in any one of these cities. We are looking at multiple, different sites. The Coliseum here in Seguin, the city of Seguin has already reserved that site as a distribution, and we are working at some of our other sites in the northern part of the county and the western end of the county. We are looking at drive-thru and walk-up models. The difficulty is once you get the shot, you have to wait 15 minutes with no allergic reactions or 30 minutes with allergic reactions. So, if you’ve ever had an allergic reaction, you’ve got to sit 30 minutes so it’s just a matter of staging those people and watching those folks,” said Pinder.
Pinder says although shots have been allocated for the state of Texas, the bulk of their arrival remains unclear.
“Here are some of the allocations that the state has gotten. They’ve received 3,000,334 million doses – allocated to the state. There’s only been 1,725,000 of those shipped out to the state in multiple jurisdictions. We are talking about every state has only received the 1,725, 000 but the allocation is three million, so we are a little behind on that. The supply and demand change is what we up against. People in the state vaccinated with one does is 1,138,000 people and then people who have fully been vaccinated with two shots 169,000 people,” said Pinder.
Commissioners also learned of those vaccines that have already been administered in the county. Pinder says hopefully, the rest of the residents won’t have to wait that long.
“We’ve received 3,846 doses of the vaccine of people who have been vaccinated. We’ve only had 566 people who have received both shots. So, when I talk about the vaccine Pfizer or Moderna, that’s a two dose so you get your first shot and 21 days for Pfizer and 28 days Moderna to go back and get it. So, there’s 566 people in the county who have received two shots. The estimated total of people who can get the vaccine, you have to be 16 or older to get Moderna and you have to be 18 and older to get Pfizer so that’s 130,156 people are eligible for a vaccine, so the plan is making sure everyone who wants a vaccine out of that number to get a vaccine here in the next months,” said Pinder.
With some folks beginning to see the vaccines, Pinder explained the sequence of events that follow that first dose.
“The hospital administered Moderna to the healthcare workers there and first responders I think over some 21 days ago. The hospital sent out notifications of people who got vaccinated that they have to come back to the hospital, the same location where you got it the first time to get your second dose. The hospital should be giving their second doses next week so like the ones going on this week in Schertz, the Pfizer, Schertz will then notify those folks, the 975 people that they need to come back to whatever location they are setting up at to get your second dose. The only one that is currently still in testing is the Johnson & Johnson and that’s a one dose vaccine and they are looking at potentially taking that to the CDC and the state for review as a one CC (cubic centimeter), you get it twice. The Johnson & Johnson is a 2 cc injection at one time,” said Pinder.
Pinder says health officials are also doing what they can to ensure that both of the two required doses are accounted for with each resident.
“But they are seeing, we did talk to the state — some people are getting their first dose, they are having reactions, side effects just sore arms, fever, chills and aren’t wanting to come back and get their second dose so a lot of counties in the region are asking that question if somebody doesn’t show up for that second dose because it’s allocated for that person, could we give it to somebody else? So far, they haven’t come up with an answer because if you give that second dose that say was for me, if I got a first dose and I didn’t come back for the second dose, if I give that dose to somebody else, I can’t guarantee they are going to get their second dose so right now, there are some questions being asked out there for that,” said Pinder.
Pinder says the allocation of COVID-19 vaccinations also came into question. He says it’s important for residents to understand who will and can be provided the vaccines for administration.
“There are multiple ways that people are getting the allocations so you have to register to be a vaccine provider. Right now, the county is working with the Schertz EMS because they are our EMS provide and GRMC. Those two are our public providers at this time. Some of these local healthcare providers — I know there’s like four medical doctor offices here that have signed up for that so if you signed up as a provider, you will get your direct allocation from the state just like everybody else is. However, Region 8 is also a provider. That’s our public health authority so once they get their vaccine, when Region 8 gets their big chunk of vaccines, they will then start going out into the communities just like we did the COVID testing, they will start doing vaccination distributions just like that so we’ll do pop sites. That’s the intent of the plan to. We were one of the first counties in the region to do the COVID testing because we were ready to do it. They called myself. They called the judge and said hey, tomorrow morning can we have a site? So, the plan that we put together is if they call us and ask us if we have a site — yes, we can have a site set up tomorrow. So, even if it’s not us administering it, it’s going to be the Texas Department of State Health Services doing it,” said Pinder.
Guadalupe County Judge Kyle Kutscher assures residents that the county is doing all that it can to remain transparent in regards to its plan to roll out the vaccinations when they arrive. He says it’s also about letting people know that the county is ready when the time comes.
“I had a number of phone calls from the public saying look, we’ve seen these other type of acitivies happening. Metropolitan areas and San Antonio and big cities, can the county do something to get going? And, I just want to reassure like Mr. Pinder was saying that we do have plans in place. We have great partnerships and collaboration with the cities, neighboring counties, our hospital — everybody in the community, volunteer groups. Everybody is ready but without vaccine from the state health services, the state or CDC, we have nothing to set up a site to give individuals in our community. So, we’ve sent written letters to state representatives and senators asking for their support to help push at the state level to get more vaccines available for smaller outlining counties like us just because we are outside of San Antonio and Bexar County. Again, you saw the numbers that Patrick presented. You’ve got 30 million Texans and they distributed 1.5 million vaccines. Everybody is in the same exact situation that we are. We don’t know when we are going to have vaccine allocations given from the state to the county. We just have to be prepared and ready for that call this afternoon basically and it can be later this week. It can be at the end of this month or it could 45 days from now that we get a major allocation. We don’t know that but I promise you we are going through the details trying to accommodate many, many different situations, different vaccine sites — like Patrick said to be able to handle up to 1,000 a day working with the volunteer groups, the hospital, the cities and other healthcare providers. We are also working with AACOG and some others to help those who might not have access to transportation, internet to sign-up. We’ve got call bank plans in place, a lot of details have gone into this already and everything is staged and ready to go. We are just working out some minor details, getting the court updated and involved and then again, trying to push the state to get us truckloads of vaccine whenever they can,” said Kutscher.
In the meantime, Texas Governor Abbott has asked the federal government to send more COVID doses to the states so the pandemic can be ended even sooner. As of today, over a million Texans have already been inoculated against the virus.