Hospitals are scrambling once again as the number of COVID-19 cases surge and continue to grow. The surge was once a prediction, now it is a reality.
“I’m no longer pondering if we’re going to see a surge,” said Dr.James McDeavitt, dean of clinical affairs at the Baylor College of Medicine. “ We’re already seeing it.”
The need for a vaccine grows stronger as Texas gains 33,401 cases in seven days, averaging 5,000 new cases per day.
“Just on the face of it, the vaccine allocation will be a complex and demanding task,” said Dr.John Hellerstedt, commissioner of the Texas Department of State Health Services, at a teleconference meeting Monday. “We don’t know when a vaccine will arrive. We don’t know which vaccines will arrive. We don’t know how many of any given vaccine will arrive.”
If a COVID-19 vaccine is released within next month, Texas officials predict it won’t be widely available until July.
“Possibly in that November, December timeframe, we could start to see those first doses become available,” Van Deusen told KHOU 11. “That’s not going to be widespread vaccination for everybody who wants it. We’re going to have to do that in a targeted way. So focusing on those critical populations like health care workers, other frontline critical workers, and those people who have health conditions, who are elderly, who are at greater risk of complications if they get COVID-19.”
Spokesperson Chris Van Deusen said he expects the vaccine to be more widely available during 2021.
“They’re all a little bit different,” Van Deusen said. “Most of them require two doses. And so that’s something that we’ll need to keep track of carefully as the vaccine gets distributed in Texas. Because, you know, if you get a dose from a certain manufacturer the first time, you need to be able to get the same vaccine the second time [as a booster].”