Despite the reduction in the COVID-19 rate, Dallas County is keeping up vaccination efforts. The county continued to use pop-up clinics, door-to-door outreach, and data analysis targeting underserved communities as their tools to increase vaccination rates in the county.
Officials observed that the number of people who are getting their first shot has gone down. County officials, including health director Philip Huang and County Judge Clay Jenkins, are hoping that the new Biden mandate will encourage more people to get the shot.
Huang told County Commissioners in a presentation this week that only 11,000 people are getting first doses each week in the county. A few weeks ago, during the spike in delta variant cases, the weekly count was about 35,000.
Since early May, the demand for the vaccine began to reduce as case counts dropped. That led to the use of various tactics by county officials to get the numbers back up. One of the tactics that officials believe worked is identifying where people are unvaccinated to provide more doses throughout the community. Officials have set up pop-up clinics in the areas with the lowest vaccination rates and door-to-door outreach to persuade residents to register and show up.
Officials are divided about the efficiency of pop-up clinics. Commissioner John Wiley Price, for one, doesn’t think some of them are done properly. In an interview with The News, he said that when the county sets up pop-up clinics at community events like jazz festivals or the State Fair of Texas, many people will not want to take time out from the festivities to get the shots. “Nobody comes to an event to get a shot,” he said, maintaining that such vaccination efforts are not a good use of the City’s time.
On the other hand, Huang says that the pop-up clinics are worth the effort as every shot in an arm is a win for the county.
Commissioner Elba Garcia shares Huang’s beliefs as she spoke of a recent event she attended in Cockrell hill where fifty-two people were vaccinated by the county’s health department within two hours. “You never know when you’re going to hit something like that. When it’s a health crisis, there’s no stopping,” she said.
The county will continue to use the same strategies in variations to promote vaccinations.