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(Bob Daemmrich)
Four providers in Travis County will receive vaccine doses starting Monday, Feb. 15, with the bulk going to hub provider Austin Public Health, as has been the case in recent weeks.
- Austin Public Health (12,000 doses)
- UT Health Austin (1,950 doses)
- CommUnity Care East Austin (500 doses)
- DSHS Central Pharmacy Warehouse (3,500 doses)
Although these providers may have doses to administer next week, many are limiting their supply to existing patient waitlists or reaching out to eligible candidates directly. View a list of providers with a waitlist here. Note that the DSHS Central Pharmacy Warehouse does not serve the general public.
With this latest allocation, Travis County will have received 155,725 doses overall. Local public health officials estimate that there are 285,000 area residents who fall in the 1A and 1B priority groups.
As of midday Friday, 100,680 Travis County residents have received at least one dose of the COVID vaccine and 39,281 residents have received both doses, according to Texas Department of State Health Services data.
DSHS will allocate 407,650 initial doses of the COVID vaccine to 302 providers across the state this week, focusing on hub providers capable of widespread community distribution as well as smaller providers serving older adults. This represents a slight increase compared to last week's allocation.
Additionally the federal government shipped 80,000 vaccine doses to 376 pharmacy locations across Texas. Participating pharmacies include CVS, H-E-B and Walmart, as well as some independent pharmacies. Last week, 15 Austin-area CVS and H-E-B pharmacy locations received such direct shipments.
The state health department is encouraging providers to make accommodations—such as reserving doses, offering special hours and facilitating in-home vaccinations—for people who are 75 or older because they remain at the highest risk of severe disease, hospitalization and death from COVID-19. People 70 and older account for 5% of confirmed COVID-19 cases in Travis County but 34% of COVID-related hospitalizations in the Austin metro and 60% of the county's COVID deaths, according to Austin Public Health data.
Second doses
In addition to this initial dose allocation, DSHS is also expecting to distribute 333,650 second doses of the vaccine to local providers to administer to individuals who received their first shot a few weeks ago.
Some local vaccine recipients may be concerned about receiving their second doses. On Monday, APH posted an update on Facebook explaining that it had not yet received a corresponding allocation of second doses for those vaccinated by the department last month. But Director Stephanie Hayden-Howard offered reassurances on Tuesday, confirming that the department had received its second doses by then. "This is a significant amount of anxiety, but I can give folks the comfort in knowing that you will definitely receive your second dose from us," she told Austin City Council.
Until recently, the federal government automatically issued second dose allocations to states after the initial allocation was sent out. Last month, this changed; the federal government now requires states to order second dose allocations. As a result, DSHS followed suit and now requires local providers—such as APH—to place orders for their second doses. "For these first several weeks, we're going to be working really closely with them," Director of Media Relations Chris Van Deusen told Austonia.
Austinites may still be concerned that they will not receive their second doses within the optimal window: three weeks for Pfizer's vaccine, four for Moderna's. Austin-Travis County Interim Health Authority Dr. Mark Escott addressed these concerns on Tuesday, pointing to new guidance issued by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on Jan. 21. In cases where "it is not feasible to adhere to the recommended interval and a delay in vaccination is unavoidable," the agency advises that second doses may be administered up to six weeks after the first ones. "This creates some flexibility in the scheduling of that second dose," Esoctt told Travis County commissioners.
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Popular
As summer temperatures continue to increase, so does Austin's "Party Island"—a hundreds-strong army of kayakers and paddle boarders who gather each weekend in the middle of Lady Bird Lake.
Born from the pandemic, the swarm of paddleboarding partiers has continued to grow each summer and can be seen from the nearby Lamar Boulevard Bridge. And while "Party Island" certainly lives up to one half of its name, it's not actually an island at all: instead, it's located at a shallow sandbar near Lou Neff Point.
With beers, burgers from portable grills and even DJ turntables in hand, more friends and strangers continue to beat the heat in new ways at the distinct Austin hangout.
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- Photo story: Austin's 'Party Island' on Lady Bird Lake - austonia ›
(Pexels)
If you are a committed, grunge-wearing resident of the Pacific Northwest, it is easy–almost automatic–to look at Texas as an extraordinarily dry, hot and culturally oppressive place that is better to avoid, especially in the summer. Our two granddaughters live with their parents in Portland.
Recently we decided to take the older girl, who is 15, to Dallas. Setting aside the summer heat, a Portlander can adjust to the vibes of Austin without effort. So let’s take Texas with all of its excesses straight up. Dallas, here we come.
Our 15-year-old granddaughter and her sister, 12, have spent summer weeks with us, usually separately so that we could better get to know each individually. In visits focused on Austin and Port Aransas, the girls seemed to be developing an affection for Texas.
Houston and Dallas are two great American cities, the 4th and 9th largest, each loaded with cultural treasures, each standing in glittering and starchy contrast to Austin’s more louche, T-shirts and shorts ways.
Three hours up I-35, Dallas loomed before us as a set of gray skyscrapers in a filmy haze, accessed only through a concrete mixmaster of freeways, ramps and exits. I drove with false confidence. Be calm, I said to myself, it will all end in 10 minutes under the hotel entrance canopy. And it did.
The pool at the Crescent Court Hotel in Dallas. (Crescent Court Hotel)
We stayed three nights at the Crescent Court Hotel ($622 a night for two queens), a high-end hotel in Uptown, patronized by women in white blazers, business people in suits, and tall, lean professional athletes, their shiny Escalades and Corvettes darting in and out, and other celebrities like Bill Barr, the former attorney general who shoe-horned his ample self into a Toyota.
Each morning as I walked to Whole Foods for a cappuccino, a fellow identified by a bellman as Billy the Oilman arrived in his Rolls Royce Phantom. Where does he park? “Wherever he wants to. He likes the Starbucks here.”
We garaged our more modest set of wheels for the visit. We were chauffeured for tips by Matt Cooney and Alfonza “The Rev” Scott in the hotel’s black Audi sedan. They drove us to museums, restaurants and past the enclaves of the rich and famous. In Highland Park, The Rev pointed out the homes of the Dallas Cowboys' Jerry Jones and Troy Aikman along with the family compound of the Hunts, oil and gas tycoons.
The Dallas Museum of Art’s “Cartier and Islam” exhibit (until Sept. 18) attracted an older crowd; the nearby Perot Museum of Nature and Science was a powerful whirlpool of kids’ groups ricocheting from the Tyrannosaurus Rex to the oil fracking exhibit. Watch your shins.
A Geogia O'Keeffe oil painting called "Ranchos Church, New Mexico" at the Amon Carter Museum of Modern Art. (Rich Oppel)
For us, the best museum was the Amon Carter Museum of Modern Art in Fort Worth, a 50-minute, madcap drive away via a 75 mph toll lane along I-30. Don’t try it during rush hour. The Carter has an exquisite collection of Remington paintings and sculptures and an excellent array of 19th and 20th-century paintings as well. Pick one museum? The Amon Carter. Peaceful, beautiful, uncrowded, free admission and small enough to manage in two hours.
The Fort Worth Stockyards, a place of history (with a dab of schmaltz), fun and good shopping, filled one of our mornings. The 98 acres brand the city as Cowboy Town, with a rodeo and a twice-daily (11:30 a.m. and 4 p.m.) cattle drive. We shopped for boots, drank coffee and watched the “herd” of 18 longhorns. So languid was their progress that if this were a real market drive the beef would have been very tough and leathery before it hit the steakhouse dinner plate.
The cattle drive at the Fort Worth Stockyards. (Rich Oppel)
But we could identify: the temperature was 97. “I saw a dog chasing a cat today,” said the emcee, deploying a very old joke. “It was so hot that both were walking.”
With limited time, we chose three very different restaurants:
- Nobu, in the Crescent Court Hotel; Jia, a modern Chinese restaurant in Highland Park; and Joe T. Garcia’s in Fort Worth. Nobu’s exotic Japanese menu set us back $480, with tip, for four (we had a guest), but it was worth it.
- Jia was an ordinary suburban strip mall restaurant, but with good food and a reasonable tab of $110 for four.
- Joe T.’s is an 85-year-old Fort Worth institution (think Matt’s El Rancho but larger), a fine Mexican restaurant where a meal with two drinks was $115.
Sushi at high-end restaurant Nobu. (Crescent Hotel)
It was all a splurge for a grandchild’s visit. Now we will get back to our ordinary road trips of Hampton Inns, where a room rate is closer to the Crescent Court’s overnight parking rate of $52. And to corner cafes in small towns.
Did Dallas change our 15-year-old’s view of Texas? “Yes. I think it’s a lot cooler than I did. The fashion, the food.” So, not only Austin is cool. Take Texas as a whole. It’s a big, complex, diverse and wonderful state.