DALLAS — More Dallas County residents will soon be able to get swine flu vaccine.
The health department released details Tuesday of how the agency will share vaccine with some major pharmaceutical retailers.
Dallas County is going to distribute 16,000 doses among four major pharmaceutical retailers. Pharmacies in Texas have yet to receive any H1N1 vaccine independently.
The hope is the move will get vaccine to those Dallas County residents with health insurance and also to those who are uninsured.
As News 8 first reported on Monday, Walmart, Walgreens, Kroger and Tom Thumb will be partnering with Dallas County Health and Human Services to distribute the vaccine. Each of those retailers has a number of pharmacies in the county.
While the county has given H1N1 vaccine for free to the uninsured, these retailers will be allowed to charge a small administrative fee to dispense the drug.
At a meeting of Dallas County Commissioners on Tuesday, health department director Zachary Thompson defended this unprecedented deal to share county resources with people who are not traditionally served by the agency.
Thompson underlined the urgency of rapidly distributing the vaccine to as many places as possible. "If you wait too long to get this vaccine out, we run the risk of getting large amounts of vaccine in January, when nobody may not want to take the vaccine," he said. "Then you have a bigger story: Why do you have so much vaccine on hand that you have to destroy?"
Dallas County is expecting 19,000 additional doses of swine flu vaccine this week.
The health department will be distributing some of that through their three public health clinics, located in Irving, Farmers Branch and their Dallas location on Stemmons Freeway.
E-mail jstjames@wfaa.com
