Nosmo said:

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Looks like Brazos County getting another 2,000 doses as Week #5 allocation. Most for St. Joseph.

Last week county averaged 171 shots a day (1,195 wk) per Texas Dashboard data.

Week 5 Texas COVID-19 Vaccine Allocation - Hub Providers

And IF the Meade person with Emergency Management is correct, these new doses won't hit the providers until NEXT WEEK.

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St. Joseph Health officials have announced the health care provider has received additional doses of the Moderna vaccine and will begin administering them this week for Phase 1B patients in Brazos County.

CHI St. Joseph College Station Hospital will receive 1,200 doses of the vaccine, according to the Department of State Health Services.
Phase 1B consists of people over 65 or with a chronic medical condition that puts them at increased risk for severe illness from COVID19.

On Sunday, the Department of State Health Services announced St. Joseph Health is one of 28 designated hubs for the vaccine. The goal of the hubs is to provide more people the vaccine and a simpler way to sign up for an appointment, according to the DSHS.

All Monday clinics at St. Joseph Health are canceled and patients who had appointments will be contacted to reschedule.

Patients must have an appointment and receive confirmation to receive the vaccine at St. Joseph Health locations. Patients without an appointment can register online for future allocations of the vaccine received by St. Joseph Health at https://www.st-joseph.org/covidvaccine.

St. Joseph Health says vaccines are given on a first-come, first-served basis. Appointments will be limited to the number of vaccines available, but more will come open as more doses arrive. Patients' names will remain on a waiting list until contacted by a St. Joseph Health staff member to schedule an appointment.

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More than 877,000 Texans have received a COVID-19 vaccine since they first began arriving in Texas nearly four weeks ago, and that number is expected to increase by at least 50,000 more per day, Gov. Greg Abbott said Monday.

"Never before in the history of this state has Texas vaccinated so many people so quickly, " Abbott said during remarks at the Esports Stadium Arlington & Expo Center, a newly-designated "vaccination hub" that local health officials said can vaccinate thousands per day. "It's stunning to see what we've accomplished."

The Arlington center, home to the city's mass vaccination effort since December, is among 28 sites designed by the state as hubs.

"Our goal is, by the end of the week, we have no vaccines left," said Tarrant County Judge B. Glen Whitley. The county's health district was allotted 9,000 doses in the most recent shipment this week.

The hubs are meant to streamline vaccinations at a time when the state is seeing an unprecedented surge in COVID-19 cases, deaths, and hospitalizations. Texas continues to prioritize vaccinating health care workers, people who are 65 and older, and those with medical conditions that increase their risk of hospitalization or death if they contract the virus.

The large sites will receive most of the state's next shipment of 158,825 COVID-19 vaccine doses this week. Just over 38,000 doses will go to 206 additional providers across the state, including several in rural counties that until recently had not received an allotment.

Officials promise bigger allotments in the weeks and months to come, but a patchwork local system of vaccine distribution, among other issues, has created a tumultuous rollout to the long-awaited vaccine.

On Monday, Abbott said Texas expects to see an additional 310,000 first doses per week for the rest of January and up to 500,000 second doses earmarked for those who have already received the injection in Texas. Continued increases are expected, Abbott said, depending on the federal government allotments.

"This structure [of hubs] that we now have created can be expanded and will be expanded very swiftly across the state," Abbott said. "The only limitation that we now face is the limitation of supply. Supply the vaccination is not something that the state of Texas is in control of. The supply of the vaccination comes only from the federal government, and for them it comes largely from the manufacturing capabilities" of the companies making the vaccine.

Two vaccines, by Pfizer BioNTech and Moderna, have been approved for emergency use by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration and are being distributed nationally. A third company, Johnson & Johnson, could seek emergency approval of its vaccine from the FDA as early as February.

The number of doses that have been administered so far includes those given at hospitals and clinics and other providers, as well as those given through a federal program to inoculate residents of long-term care facilities and nursing homes, Abbott said.

The data on the number of doses administered has a reporting lag of at least two days, Abbott said, but added that Texans will start to see a significant uptick in those numbers as this week's vaccinations are reported.

"You are going to see those numbers increase, as it turns out, somewhere between 50,000 and 75,000 per day," Abbott said.

Texas Health Commissioner John Hellerstedt said the rate and scale of the state's rollout has been "a really amazing operation" and said the creation of the hubs would ratchet up the rate of administration.

"Through the kind of vaccination operation we see here, we're very confident it's going to accelerate here even more," Hellerstedt said. "It is really the way forward."

Abbott and other health officials at the Arlington site on Monday urged Texas residents and providers to be patient while the state supply catches up with the demand among those eligible for the shot.

"We will be getting more vaccine, and we will be discovering better ways to administer the vaccine in a timely way to everyone who is willing to get it, but we just don't have that supply yet," Hellerstedt said. "I can't say that more emphatically. If we had more, there'd be more going out."

Abbott on Monday said he and other governors were pushing Walgreens and CVS to speed up their programs to more swiftly get vaccines to nursing home and long-term care residents. That process, he said, "is moving at a far slower pace than what the state of Texas is moving at."

Abbott said 487,500 doses have been allocated for long term care centers through CVS and Walgreens, but that only 75,312 of those doses have been administered, or about 15%.

"Which means the rest either haven't been given out or haven't been reported yet," Abbott said. "There is no reason for that process to be moving as slowly as it is."

Officials from Walgreens and CVS could not be immediately reached for comment Monday.

Just over 2 million doses have been allocated to the state since mid-December, according to the Texas Department of State Health Services.

Texas has administered the first dose of the two-dose regimen to more people than any other state in the nation, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, but demand among the more than 8 million people who currently qualify still far outweigh the state's vaccine supply.

More vaccination hubs will be announced as weekly shipments get bigger, health officials say. In announcing the plan last week, DSHS said the hubs will be required to set up registration phone numbers and websites and to focus on the most vulnerable communities in their regions. Contact information for the hubs can be found here.

The effort comes as production ramps up on various COVID-19 vaccine candidates in anticipation of federal approval, including two being produced in Texas.

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BigMamaP said:

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Does anyone know if Scott and White is or will be a vaccine hub like St. Joseph?

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FlyRod said:

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Just reading about a dude buying Hot Pockets at a CVS and a random pharmacy staffer came up and asked him if he wanted the vaccine because "We have plenty."

Wonder if we're heading for sketchy dudes in trench coats furtively opening one side and whispering "Pssst, hey you...yeah you. Wanna vaccine?"

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BigMamaP said:

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Does anyone know if Scott and White is or will be a vaccine hub like St. Joseph?

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I made an appointment for Wednesday.

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MiMi said:

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I made an appointment for Wednesday.

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How did your appointment go? Able to get the vaccine? My husband is registered for tomorrow. Just wondering how the process went.

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BCSMom said:

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Where are people registering for appointments?

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Appt this afternoon. Have talked to friends that went yesterday. They said it was efficient process. In and out in 20 minutes.

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MiMi said:

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Appt this afternoon. Have talked to friends that went yesterday. They said it was efficient process. In and out in 20 minutes.

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Thanks! My husband's PCP is at Scott & White. Let me know what documentation they are asking, if any, to show that the individual qualifies to be in group 1b (beside age).

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armymom said:

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I signed up as 1B on St Joe site and haven't heard from them yet. So guess I didn't make on this week's distribution. Also not a St Joe patient and wonder if that matters.

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Johnson & Johnson's one-dose coronavirus vaccine is safe and appears to generate a promising immune response in both young and elderly volunteers, according to trial data published Wednesday in the New England Journal of Medicine.

J&J scientists randomly assigned healthy adults between the ages of 18 and 55 and those 65 and older to receive a high or low dose of its vaccine called Ad26.COV2.S or a placebo. Some participants in the 18-to-55 age group were also selected to receive a second dose of the vaccine.

Most of the volunteers produced detectable neutralizing antibodies, which researchers believe play an important role in defending cells against the virus, after 28 days, according to the trial data. By day 57, all volunteers had detectable antibodies, regardless of vaccine dose or age group, and remained stable for at least 71 days in the 18-to-55 age group.

The most common side effects were fever, fatigue, headache, muscle aches and pain at the injection site, according to the trial data. Side effects were less common in the older age group, who received only one dose of the vaccine, as well as those who received a lower dose of the vaccine, according to the data.

The phase one and two clinical trial data shows a single shot of the vaccine "gives sustainable antibodies," Dr. Paul Stoffels, chief scientific officer at J&J, told CNBC's Meg Tirrell in an interview. He added it gives the company "confidence" the vaccine will be highly effective against the virus.

The trial tested 805 volunteers. The company is expected to release results from its 45,000-person phase three trial later this month. J&J is using the same technologies it used to develop its Ebola vaccine for its Covid-19 vaccine.

U.S. officials and Wall Street analysts are eagerly anticipating the authorization of J&J's vaccine, which could happen as early as next month. Public health officials and infectious disease experts say world leaders will need an array of drugs and vaccines to defeat the virus, which has killed at least 382,120 Americans since the beginning of the pandemic.

If J&J's vaccine is authorized by the Food and Drug Administration, it would be the third approved for use in the U.S. behind the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine and Moderna's. Pfizer's vaccine was authorized on Dec. 11, and Moderna's was authorized a week later on Dec. 18.

The data comes as U.S. officials complain that the pace of vaccinations has been too slow as the supply of vaccine doses exceeds demand. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention expanded Covid vaccine eligibility guidelines Tuesday to include people 65 and older as well as people with preexisting conditions. The government is also changing the way it allocates Covid vaccine doses, now basing it on how quickly states can administer shots and the size of their elderly population.

The Trump administration will also stop holding back millions of doses reserved for the second round of shots of Pfizer's and Moderna's two-dose vaccines, the official said, adding they've released doses that were being held in reserve on Sunday. President-elect Joe Biden's transition team announced a similar plan Friday.

Unlike Pfizer's and Moderna's authorized vaccines, which require two doses about three to four weeks apart, J&J's requires only one dose. That means patients will not have to come back for another dose, simplifying logistics for health-care providers.

The Department of Health and Human Services announced in August that it reached a deal with Janssen, J&J's pharmaceutical subsidiary, worth approximately $1 billion for 100 million doses of its vaccine. The deal gives the federal government the option to order an additional 200 million doses, according to the announcement.

Stoffels said the company plans to ship the vaccine at 2 to 8 degrees Celsius, which is about 36 to 46 degrees Fahrenheit.

"We have three months stability as of this moment at 2 to 8," he said. "That will be expanded over the year as we generate more stability data. We know from our other vaccines it can go up to a year, but at the start we can't do that because we don't have it for this vaccine."

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