AUSTIN, Texas — Texas has given H-E-B pharmacies about 100 doses of the COVID-19 vaccine at each location, according to a spokesperson for H-E-B.
But the KVUE Defenders found out the Texas grocery giant won’t give the shot to people in the second wave of vaccinations yet.
Bryan Carter is one of the people in the phase 1B group.
“It's not only frustrating, it's frightening to know that there's just a lack of coordination either between the state in the stores or just themselves,” Carter said.
Carter has type 2 diabetes, which puts him in the second group of people Texas has decided should receive the COVID-19 vaccine.
Carter asked two H-E-B pharmacies in different parts of Texas if they would vaccinate him. He said both locations told him no because they aren’t logistically ready to do that yet.
“They’re sitting on the vaccination,” Carter said. “It's the lives that are at stake. That's what's at stake. And unfortunately, there is going to continue to even cost additional lives.”
A spokesperson for the company told KVUE that H-E-B has used the vast majority of the COVID-19 doses they received from the state and is waiting to find out when they will receive more.
The spokesperson went on to say, “We will continue to move into vaccinating people in Phase 1B when we receive more allocation of Covid-19 vaccine from the state of Texas. Updates will be communicated with customers via our Pharmacy page on heb.com and H-E-B Newsroom. An appointment must be scheduled to receive the Covid-19 vaccine, and an online scheduler will be made available soon. Our pharmacies will not accept walk ins.”
The only problem is that online scheduler doesn’t exist yet.
So, H-E-B isn’t ready to start giving out those vaccines. But Carter said it should be.
“We’ve known about the vaccine for months,” Carter said. “We've known about the virus for a year. We knew that the vaccine would eventually come.”
The spokesperson for HEB said the online scheduling tool will be made available soon.
As soon as it is, she said the company plans to vaccinate both the first and second group of recipients as soon as they have enough doses from the State.
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