AUSTIN, Texas — Along with opening up the COVID-19 vaccine to every adult in Texas, the Department of State Health Services (DSHS) also released a new website that’s going to help people get the shot.
It’s called the Texas Public Health Vaccine Scheduler and it went live early Monday morning.
“The scheduler gives people one place to sign up for a COVID-19 shot through multiple public health departments, including the eight DSHS public health regions,” DSHS said in a news release Monday.
Within a day of signing up, DSHS said people eligible to be vaccinated will be matched with the next available appointment within their home county and preferred times.
If no appointments are available, the scheduler will keep searching for appointments as more are scheduled. The system will contact users when they have an appointment available.
To sign up, start with going online to getthevaccine.dshs.texas.gov.
You will likely come to a landing page that puts you in a waiting room with a time estimate for how long the wait is. Don’t close or refresh that page – the system will let you in automatically as soon as it’s your turn to set up your profile.
Eventually, you’ll get to the homepage. This will mark the start of a process that only takes a few minutes.
First, you put in some contact information, along with some personal details to help the system know when it’s your turn to get the shot.
You’ll get to pick preferred days and time of day for your appointment, and the system will contact you when there are available times.
Now that vaccine appointments are open to anyone in Texas, some question whether that will make it harder for seniors and high-risk individuals to get the shot.
“We have made our expectations of our providers very clear that while we are opening up eligibility to the younger populations, we still want them to prioritize those that are our senior populations as well as those with chronic conditions that make them at greater risk,” Expert Vaccine Allocation Panel Chair Imelda Garcia said.
Texas is set to get more than 1 million first doses of the vaccine this week.
Providers in Williamson County will get more than 10,000 doses, Travis County will receive more than 34,000 doses and Hays County will get about 3,000 doses.
You can check the State’s full list of vaccine allocations for this week by clicking here.
It’s also important to note – simply signing up on the new DSHS website does not guarantee you an appointment somewhere.
DSHS still recommends you try to go through other channels to get the vaccine as early as possible.
“The Texas Public Health Vaccine Scheduler will not replace all COVID-19 vaccine registration in the state,” DSHS said in a news release Monday. “Many entities – including pharmacies, medical practices and some public health departments – are operating their own registration system and will continu8e to do so. People who want to be vaccinated should continue to look for available vaccine at those providers, as well. Links to other vaccine scheduling tools are available at dshs.texas.gov/coronavirus/immunize/vaccine."
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