Dallas Plans for Firefighters, Medics, Cops to Get COVID Vaccine First

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Dallas officials want first responders to be among the first local recipients of COVID-19 vaccines, but it’s unclear if the city will receive any in the first round of shipments from the state.

With two possible vaccines on the horizon, several key questions still remain on local distribution efforts, including if the city will be approved to directly disseminate it, how and where it’ll be stored, and how to ensure people take the injection.

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“This is a monumental task,” Dr. S. Marshal Isaacs, Dallas Fire-Rescue’s medical director, said during a City Council ad-hoc COVID-19 committee meeting Thursday. “We’ve never attempted something like this in the city, the county, the state or the country. The logistics of getting just our first responders, all of our city employees and the 1.4 million residents of Dallas — the logistics are incredibly complicated.”

Shipment of vaccines could begin as soon as the Food and Drug Administration approves their emergency use, which could be the week of Dec. 14, he said.

The first batch statewide will likely be allocated first to hospitals and other facilities for frontline health care providers.

The city doesn’t employ frontline medical workers who work in hospitals or nursing homes, and it was unclear on Friday how much from the initial vaccine supply would be available for local jurisdictions and if any would trickle down to Dallas.

“I wouldn’t be surprised if we don’t get any this time around,” Isaacs said Friday. The second batch of vaccines could come sometime in January, he said.

The city plans to prioritize paramedics first, then EMS/firefighters and finally police officers and city marshals for the vaccine, according to Isaacs. Vulnerable city employees would likely be in the next tier to get the vaccine.

Receiving the vaccine will not be mandatory, he said. Plans to distribute the vaccine to the general public are unknown and that’s likely months away.

Initial plans have only been developed for city staff, according to Isaacs and Rocky Vaz, Dallas’ Office of Emergency Management director, who also spoke to council members during the Thursday meeting. The draft plans still have to be reviewed by local medical experts, Isaacs said.

“We are working diligently with our county and health care partners to try to understand what the overall plan is to vaccinate the city of Dallas in general,” Issacs said Thursday. “Right now, all our efforts are focused on our first responders and our city employees.”

This comes after Gov. Greg Abbott announced Wednesday that Texas could initially receive more than 1.4 million doses of coronavirus vaccines this month.

Two vaccines that could be ready the soonest, one from Pfizer and the other from Moderna, would require people receiving two doses — three weeks apart for the Pfizer vaccine and four weeks for Moderna. It’s unclear if the vaccines will need to be administered annually.

There have been more than 1.2 million coronavirus cases in Texas, killing over 22,000 people. Dallas County has recorded nearly 131,000 cases.

North Texas on Thursday also hit the seventh straight day in which coronavirus patients accounted for more than 15% of hospitalizations in the region. The benchmark kicked into effect a state order from Abbott that orders bars to close and mandates North Texas restaurants, retail stores and gyms to shrink from 75% capacity to 50%.

The capacity restrictions will continue unless the COVID-19 regional hospitalization rate dips below 15% for a week straight.

Dallas has asked the state to receive vaccine doses directly and was still waiting for a response, city officials said Friday. The city still has to figure out how to store the vaccines, which have to be kept in freezing temperatures and can last there for up to six months. Pfizer said last month that its vaccine had to be stowed away at around 100 degrees below zero in order to stay effective.

The Kay Bailey Hutchinson Convention Center is among options being considered to be a hosting site for the vaccine and where city first responders and employees would be given doses, Isaacs said.

Several council members expressed concern that some community members may refuse to take the vaccine due to mistrust or misinformation about the medicine.

The city may need to ramp up its education efforts on the vaccine, Isaacs said, and that could include city and faith-based leaders who vouch for the effectiveness of the medicine if the data backs it up.

Catherine Cuellar, a city spokeswoman, said plans to inform employees and the community in English and Spanish about the vaccine are in the works. Those efforts include messages to advise people that both doses of the vaccine are needed in order to be effective and that they can’t be interchanged. For example, if someone took the Pfizer vaccine for a first dose, they can’t use the Moderna vaccine for the second.

Dr. Philip Huang, Dallas County health and human services director, expressed skepticism during the Thursday meeting that the capacity reduction would be cause for significant change on its own. Many people are hitting “COVID fatigue” as the holiday season continues and feel they have sacrificed enough.

The vaccine is “showing us a light at the end of the tunnel, but it’s going to be months before we get widespread availability for everyone,” said Huang, who is one of several doctors being consulted by the city’s vaccine distribution group. “It doesn’t mean that we can relax.”

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