Texas expects to see about 1.5 million doses arrive this week, including last week’s undelivered doses, and the opening of three new federally supported vaccination hubs.
Karen Brooks Harper
Karen Brooks Harper reported on the state budget and health and human services from 2020 to 2024. An alumna of the Missouri School of Journalism, Karen arrived in Texas in 1995 to join the Corpus Christi Caller-Times, spent several years in Laredo and Mexico covering immigration and the drug war for Knight-Ridder newspapers, and has covered Texas politics for more than two decades for news organizations including the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, the Dallas Morning News and Reuters.
Posted in
Winter Storm 2021
“An emergency on top of a pandemic”: Texas hospital workers scramble as winter storm hampered operations
Water disruptions, patient logjams, overflowing emergency rooms, exhausted workers, staffing shortages and power outages created challenging conditions for health care workers across the state.
Posted in
Winter Storm 2021
“Please help us, please”: More than 100 older and disabled Texans were stranded without power in Austin high-rise
Firefighters helped staff evacuate residents who wanted to go to shelters after more than two days of frigid temperatures and dwindling food supplies.
Posted in
Coronavirus in Texas
Hundreds of thousands of COVID-19 vaccine deliveries, injections delayed by winter storm
Vaccine events and appointments across Texas were shut down when snow and ice made travel too dangerous, brought power outages and delayed vaccine deliveries.
Posted in
Coronavirus in Texas
Three FEMA-run vaccination sites aimed at underserved Texans to open later this month, Abbott says
Combined, the three sites are expected to administer more than 10,000 shots per day, with doses supplied by FEMA.
Posted in
Coronavirus in Texas
Older and disabled Texans are demanding their home caregivers be vaccinated for COVID-19. But many workers don’t want it.
Home health workers, most of whom are women of color, could start losing their jobs if they aren’t vaccinated against COVID-19. Experts widely agree that the vaccine is safe — Pfizer and Moderna both reported their vaccines are more than 90% effective at protecting people from serious illness — but some still refuse to get a shot.
Posted in
Coronavirus in Texas
Texas has administered most of its 1.7 million vaccine doses as it prepares to receive 333,000 more
Some 78% of the 1,725,575 doses already shipped to providers have been used, including second doses, Gov. Greg Abbott said, and Texas is set to receive 333,650 first doses of the COVID-19 vaccine.
Posted in
Coronavirus in Texas
After a rocky start, Gov. Greg Abbott promises to ramp up COVID-19 vaccinations across Texas
Twenty-eight coronavirus vaccination hubs will receive most of the state’s next shipment of COVID-19 vaccines this week, with 158,825 doses shipping to providers able to manage large-scale efforts as more doses arrive in the state.
Posted in
Coronavirus in Texas
Four years ago, Texas Republicans were the most likely to use mail-in voting. Here’s how that flipped in the last election.
Absentee ballots, which only certain groups of Texans are eligible to use, have traditionally been a tool utilized by the GOP, and in 2016, higher percentages of Republican voters cast absentee ballots than did Democratic voters.
Posted in
Coronavirus in Texas
More than two dozen of Texas’ rural hospitals haven’t received any COVID-19 vaccines
Those lucky enough to be near another provider with shots available are relying on neighborly generosity — encouraged but not mandated by the state — to innoculate front-line workers while they wait.
