BELL COUNTY, TX — Millions of people have already gotten at least one dose of the COVID-19 vaccine and now the list of who is eligible for a vaccine is expanding.
Groups 1A and 1B have been receiving vaccines for a while, but the list now includes people in group 1C.
As of Monday, people that fall into Phase 1C can now get a vaccine if they choose to.
”Where as last week we were vaccinating people in group 1-a and 1-b which was over 65 or over 16 with a chronic medical condition, this morning we are vaccinating anyone over 50 or over 16 with a chronic medical condition,” said James Stafford, Bell County Public Information Officer.
Bell County officials said recent partnerships with local hospitals will help to vaccinate as many people as possible.
”We’re giving over 1,000 doses to each of Advent, Seton, and Baylor Scott and White Health and they’ve been doing an amazing job of getting those into the arms of Central Texans,” said Stafford.
Those in charge of vaccination distribution said the partnerships and distribution operation is running smoothly and adding more people to the eligibility list will not slow them down.
“We have partnered with Bell County to deliver 200 doses a day and we are able to adequately fill those slots,” said Tammy Rodriguez, Chief Nursing Officer for AdventHealth, Killeen.
The only issue they said they are having is people booking appointments to get vaccinated and not showing up, but they found a work around.
”We’ve developed a really great system where if patients have called and unable to get an appointment, as soon as someone doesn’t show we start calling to be able to use that vaccine. So, our waste has been very minimal,” said Rodriguez.
Bell County has also partnered with Baylor Scott and White and Seton Medical center who are running similar operations.
It is recommended that if you are eligible for the vaccine, that you schedule an appointment with 1 of the 3 hospitals sooner rather than later.
