AUSTIN, Texas — Health care providers are waiting for the next round of COVID-19 vaccines to show up. While they wait, they still haven’t used all of the doses they have available.
But new numbers from the Department of State Health Services show Texas is making a lot of progress with vaccinating the population.
Providers have given out more than 1.3 million doses of the vaccine. That’s out of the more than 1.7 million doses they’ve received.
That means vaccine providers in Texas have used about 79% of the vaccines that have been shipped to them, according to DSHS data.
We’ve seen the percent of available vaccines used going up at a staggering rate in the past several weeks.
The KVUE Defenders first started reporting on this a few weeks ago, back when less than a quarter of the available vaccines were used.
That number has been climbing – passing 50% about a week ago, and now hitting almost 80%.
Earlier on Tuesday, Gov. Greg Abbott said the biggest hurdle the state faces now is getting more doses of the vaccine.
“There’s only one limitation that we have at this moment in time, and that is an inadequate supply of vaccinations,” Gov. Abbott said. “And that supply of vaccinations comes only from the federal government.”
DSHS data also tells us more than 1 million people have been vaccinated with one dose, while about 177,000 people have been fully vaccinated in Texas.
Gov. Abbott also said this week that Texas is on track to receive its largest supply of vaccines yet.
Abbott said we can expect more than 843,000 doses, and that number should increase in the weeks ahead.
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