Tarrant County Residents Should Expect Long Wait For COVID-19 Vaccine As Demand Continues To Increase
(CBSDFW.COM) - As the lines outside vaccination centers in Tarrant County have started to diminish, the lines of people waiting for an appointment are getting longer.
Phone lines have been overwhelmed with as many as 3,000 calls a day coming in, often from people unsure if their vaccine registration information has been received. With hour-long hold times, county officials are concerned the crush of calls could be keeping some people without computer access from getting through to make appointments.
"People get impatient. If its two, three, four days or more, they start calling, 'Hey can you check and see where I am in the cue'," said public health director Vinny Taneja.
The short answer, he said, is there's a long wait.
As of Friday more than 315,000 people had been registered for a vaccine. People who registered during the final days of December are just receiving their appointments now.
Limited supply is likely to make the wait longer. Tarrant County Public Health received 9,000 doses Thursday, that it believes are the doses they have been allocated for next week. With the speed of vaccinations scaled up at large vaccine hubs, it's likely those doses will run out by Wednesday or Thursday unless another shipment arrives.
"Partner health systems that have received doses are helping take some of the registrations from the county list. So if you registered just recently, all I ask is a little bit of patience, the supplies not here," Taneja said.
The county is looking at the possibility of contracting with a commercial call center to handle the volume of calls.
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