(Seguin) – It looks as though Guadalupe County will soon be
forced to transition out of providing its large scale COVID-19 vaccine
clinics as seen over the last few months at the Seguin Coliseum and in Schertz. Now, although vaccine clinics are still scheduled for the
next few weeks, the decline in people wanting the vaccine has the
county and its municipalities looking at other ways of ensuring that
the vaccine gets into the arms of those who want one.
Guadalupe County Judge Kyle Kutscher says although all efforts
are still in full swing, this transition looks to be around the corner.
“We talked about this for many many months, and I think we are
starting that transition right now, today. Being honest, I think we
started it last week where the state has contacted us and has
additional vaccines that they want to give us, and we don’t have
people to give them to and I’m talking about thousands of vaccines.
The same has happened with the hospital. The same has happened with the cities. This natural transition has started, and we are going to work through together openly and honestly is one that will take place of moving away from large scale mass vaccine clinics, drive thrus and sites to our big box pharmacies like HEB, Walgreen’s, CVS’s and then transition and filter down into primary care physicians. So, we just want to put that out there for the media and for the public saying ‘that time has come.’ Speaking with all the cities and our partners, everybody is agreement that that time is now,” said Kutscher.
Kutscher says the decision is also largely based on the number
of resources that it takes to host such large efforts.
“We’ve had great partnerships and communication throughout
this entire process and pandemic between all the cities, the hospital,
the school districts, manufacturing community, business owners and
just the general public. Everybody has worked extremely well together and that hasn’t been the case in other parts of the state or the country but we’ve been truly fortunate to have real partners that have been involved, engaged and active and have offered to carry the weight through these troubling and stressful times. For all those that have been working so hard to create these vaccine clinics, we are to a
point where we are going to have to basically be saying ‘don’t send us
anymore vaccines.’ That’s a difficult comment to hear for some in the public if they thought and still think that this is one of the most
important things we could be doing as a community but it’s also not
efficient or effective to have the tremendous amount of resources
dedicated to multiple vaccine clinics in the county every single week
trying to facilitate 5,000 appointments when we have those shots
sitting there in a cooler or a freezer and we can only get 500-600
people to take them,” said Kutscher.
Kutscher says the county is still committed to see residents
through this public health crisis and is ready to respond in any way
deemed necessary.
“There are still plenty of vaccines available. We are going to
help facilitate everything we possibly can to make sure that the
public is protected and safe. Anybody who wants and is willing to take a vaccine, we will make sure that they are available. If there are
spikes in the future, or there is another outbreak of some kind, we
are going to be here to work with our partners who have been so great and beneficial to do what we need to do for the public but right now, it can be handled through those providers that I mentioned, “said Kutscher.
Patrick Pinder, the Guadalupe County emergency management
coordinator who has been overseeing the county’s efforts of the
COVID-19 pandemic since the very beginning says, plenty of work still remains in making sure people are kept safe.
“We have second dose clinics scheduled next Wednesday, the following Thursday, the following Thursday — for the rest of this month and then we’ll reassess that. The hospital still has vaccines. We will just scale it down and work with those smaller communities and church groups. If you have 50 people in your area that need a vaccine, you get the 50 people and you tell us. We will go to you. As long as you have the people, that’s all we are asking. At this point, there are no more wait list in Guadalupe County,” said Pinder.
Pinder does note that any remaining clinics scheduled at the Coliseum will continue as a drive-thru so that the building can be returned to the city of Seguin.
Of the 91,095 COVID-19 vaccines that the county has been provided, it has administered 84,410 vaccinations.
A total of 53,772 people has received their first shot. There are also
32,285 residents who have been fully vaccinated. Those fully
vaccinated is about 18.9 percent of the total population.
The total case count of active COVID-19 cases in Guadalupe County is currently 143. The county is also reporting seven hospitalizations. To date, there has also been 229 people who have fallen victim and who have died in Guadalupe County due to COVID-19.