Texas’ Covid-19 vaccination rate is relatively high but it’s still fighting to get shots in arms amid rising cases

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“I want to put our lives back in order,” Camila, who is about to be in eighth grade, told CNN. She wants to go public without a mask, she says. She wants to go on family vacation and safely to school in person, says she struggles with distance learning. “And I want to be sure too.”

Camila was vaccinated at an Austin Public Health site in Del Valle, Texas, on the outskirts of the capital in partnership with the nonprofit Emancipet, which provides routine health care for dogs. Officials went there to find people like Camila who are unvaccinated but willing to change that.

As the pace of vaccination slows down, Austin is making an effort to get more firearms, making staff available in locations across the city – veterinary clinics, churches, recreation centers, construction sites, homeless shelters – just to vaccinate 10, 15, or 20 people at once.

Overall, Travis County, which Austin is a part of, does relatively well when it comes to vaccinations. According to data from the Texas Department of State Health Services Monday, approximately 63.4% of the county’s population over 12 years old is fully vaccinated, compared with about 52.9% of the state’s population over 12 years old.

But it’s not enough to contain the rising tide of infections and hospitalizations caused by the Delta variant, officials say.

Austin Mayor Steve Adler told CNN the county and city had done well and pointed out the high vaccination rate. “Which just goes to show that this variant of Covid, Delta, is much more contagious and has a much greater impact,” he said.

To begin with, Austin vaccinated thousands of people every day, said Dr. Desmar Walkes, Austin-Travis County Health Department, told CNN. Vaccines were so popular that some people had to be turned away first.

Nowadays? “We look at maybe 50 to 100 people, depending on how many teams we have on a given day,” said Walkes.

“Our ICU capacity is reaching a critical point where the risk has increased significantly for the entire community and not just those in need of treatment for COVID,” Walkes said in a statement Friday. “If we don’t come together as a community now, we are putting the lives of loved ones at risk who may need intensive care.”

Adler added, “It is more than frustrating that it is so difficult to get vaccines into people’s arms today when we were distributing thousands of them just a few months ago. And we do everything we can. ”

Now the “labor-intensive effort” includes “going door-to-door virtually,” he said.

“We’re trying to find people where they are,” said Adler. “We work with trustworthy voices and communities, work with churches and faith institutions, faith leaders.”

Camila admits she was nervous about getting an injection. She says she didn’t want to get vaccinated at first. But she was the last member of her family who needed it – everyone else had been vaccinated.

So she decided to listen to someone she trusts – her mother, who told her the vaccine was the best way to get back to normal.

“My mother spoke to me in the car and said, ‘If you want the world to be a better place, we have to help,'” said Camila. “Everyone has to get vaccinated.”

“An epidemic among the unvaccinated”

After weeks of progress, Covid-19 cases are rapidly increasing in states across the country. In Texas, the 7-day moving average on Monday was 9,789 new daily cases, according to a CNN analysis of Johns Hopkins University data. That’s since July 1, when the seven-day moving average of new daily cases was around 1,500.

Austin feels the rise too. The city’s Covid-19 dashboard showed a seven-day moving average of about 365 new daily cases on Monday, up from about 34 on July 1. Hospital admissions have also risen, with 346 patients reported an average of seven days in the previous week from Monday, compared with 57 patients in early July.

“This delta variant has really resulted in an alarming increase in the number of cases,” Walkes told CNN. “We went from 30 cases a day to almost 400 cases a day in almost two and a half, three weeks.”

“That’s because we still have a lot of people who aren’t vaccinated,” she said.

Almost everyone in the city’s hospitals are not vaccinated, Adler told CNN.

“Almost everyone in our intensive care units is not vaccinated. We don’t have anyone with ventilators in our city who is vaccinated,” he said. “This is an epidemic among the unvaccinated.”

Last week, the city moved into level 4 of 5 of its risk-based guidelines, recommending that partially or unvaccinated individuals avoid private gatherings, restaurants, travel, and shopping unless absolutely necessary. And everyone – vaccinated or not – is advised to wear a mask. Meanwhile, Governor Greg Abbott has said he will not impose a nationwide mask mandate and has previously banned local government agencies from requiring vaccines. Texans know “what the standards are and what practices they want to use to protect themselves,” he told CNN affiliate KPRC last week. “This is time for personal responsibility.”

But on the front lines, Adler said, “these kinds of messages make it difficult for us to get the behavior we want when our governor is unwilling to actually join in a way that sends a clear message to the community about the need.” about getting vaccinated and about the ability and importance of people to wear masks when the number of infections is very high. “

Alignment to the “moving center”

Still, Austin officials and the governor agree that vaccines against the virus are effective.

Health officials are now focusing on what Walkes calls the “moving center” – people looking for more information or needing to address their concerns individually.

So-called strike teams mobilize in communities to find these people where they live, work and play, says Walkes.

But that means more manpower is being used to vaccinate fewer people. And officials also need to fight misinformation and convince people that the vaccines are safe and effective, she says.

“Every person we can vaccinate is a different person who doesn’t get sick,” she said. “The vaccines work to prevent serious illness, hospitalization, and death.”

The effort Austin has made to increase vaccinations is a pattern that is playing out across the state.

The Texas Department of State Health Services will provide $ 10 million to local vaccine sponsorship organizations such as education agencies, religious organizations, community coalitions, and nonprofits.

There has been some success in Austin, Walkes says, describing a “slight increase” in people getting vaccinated, especially when it comes to kids like Camila.

“In particular, we see parents getting children to vaccinate,” said Walkes, “because we are weeks away from reopening the school and want to do everything we can to protect our children.”

Correction: An earlier version of this story used the incorrect spelling for the charitable emancipet.

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