Central Texas counties vaccinate 3,000 people in test run for mega site at Circuit of the Americas

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More than 3,000 people were vaccinated against Covid-19 this past weekend at Circuit of the Americas.

Officials from Travis, Hays, Bastrop and Caldwell counties are working to open a drive-thru mass vaccination site there that could eventually vaccinate 50,000 people in a week. Saturday’s event served as a test run.

Travis County Judge Andy Brown said the bulk of those vaccinated on Saturday – about 2,100 people – were CommUnityCare patients. Of those patients, 77 percent were Hispanic, 7 percent were African American and 10 percent were Anglo/non-Hispanic.

Brown said the site initially had some “hiccups” and “bottlenecks at certain points” that increased the wait time for people getting vaccinated. A lot of that slowdown was due to paperwork.

He said the county is going to work with CommUnityCare to eliminate a couple of steps that people have to go through on-site by having them do more of the paperwork at home.

Brown said the site is expected to get another 15,000 vaccines from the state in the coming week.

“And we hope that number – and we anticipate that number – will keep growing week after week after week until we are doing up to 10,000 a day,” he said.

The site at Circuit of the Americas could also use more volunteers as they scale up, Brown said. Anyone interested in volunteering can sign up at CentralTXVaccs.org.

Editor’s Note: Andy Brown is on the board of the Capital of Texas Media Foundation, the parent nonprofit of the Austin Monitor.

This story was produced as part of the Austin Monitor’s reporting partnership with KUT.

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