DALLAS COUNTY, Texas — Wednesday marked Day 1 of Prism Health North Texas’ monkeypox vaccine hotline.
“As soon as we opened the hotline, the phones rang off the hook and we went well over into our extra capacity for our phone system,” Prism Health CEO Dr. John Carlo said. “We think after about an hour, close to an hour here today, we've really pretty much booked up all of our appointments, so it moved very, very quickly.”
Carlo told WFAA Prism Health received 300 vaccine doses from Dallas County. And just about all 300 appointments are now already filled.
“Again, shows how much demand there is around getting a vaccine,” Carlo added.
Prism Health is one of several community partners working closely with Dallas County to administer monkeypox vaccines. Others are Parkland Health, Abounding Prosperity, and the AIDS Healthcare Foundation.
In a statement, Parkland Health said it “is only vaccinating high-risk patients and not providing vaccinations to the public at this time. Dallas County Health and Human Services provided Parkland with a limited supply of vaccines for the time being.”
On Wednesday, Dallas County reported a one-day, 16-case increase, bringing the county’s total to 191. Three of those reported cases are in women, according to Dallas County Health and Human Services.
Community health partners working with the county can’t say it enough: North Texas needs more monkeypox vaccines.
“We've heard people going up to Canada and getting vaccines because there is more available up in Canada,” Carlo said. “I do think that there is hope that we can expect enough supply for everyone in the future. We just don't know when that future is exactly going to be.”
Tarrant County is seeing the same demand for the monkeypox vaccine too, where county leaders are also leaning on their health partners, including The Help Center for LGBT Health & Wellness in Arlington.
“We are the people who are on the front lines. We are on the streets. We are working with the people who are most at risk and we've developed relationships with the community over the last 20 years,” The Help Center CEO DeeJay Johannessen said.
This week, officials with Tarrant County Public Health (TCPH) announced the county received 1,000 more doses, which community health partners will help administer, The Help Center told WFAA.
The Help Center said they’ve spent a lot of time advocating for more shots.
“I understand being frustrated. We were frustrated at first and so we made calls and we called the state. We called the CDC,” Johannessen said. “We called because we needed more vaccine in.”
According to TCPH, they’ve partnered with The Help Center, JPS Hospital, the City of Arlington, and the AIDS Healthcare Foundation.
In a statement, JPS said it “is partnering with Tarrant County Public Health to provide monkeypox vaccines, and in the coming weeks will be providing a small number of vaccines to current JPS patients who meet high-risk criteria set by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.”