In Dallas, And Texas, COVID Herd Immunity Remains A Distant Goal

DALLAS — May 15, 2020, Texas recorded its first COVID-19 related death. A year later, the state is still reeling from an early lift of restrictions and the spike that health care providers said would result.

So there's good news and there's bad news. The good news is that 30 percent of Texans have been immunized and that cases have fallen dramatically from the most recent peak that followed Christmas and the New Year holidays. The bad news is that variants continue to spread across the Lone Star State, and vaccinations cannot help if they're sitting on a shelf.

Meanwhile across the country, in more than half the states where the immunized population exceeds 30 percent, coronavirus cases have dropped precipitously.

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So it's a battle, really, and COVID-19 wants to stay alive. What started out as a single strain now has dozens of cousins, and what no one can say is exactly when one or more of those mutations will become immune to any or all of the vaccines.

Ultimately that means the health of the state could depend on the people least likely to be convinced they should get vaccinated. Vaccine hesitancy continues to be worrisome. But that's compounded among African American and Hispanic populations — where there's already a higher incidence of infection — by Texans lack of access to the vaccine because of transportation issues or the simple distance to providers.

What remains between Texans and infection are other mitigating factors, such as mask wearing and social distancing, which have been tarnished by politicization. In turn, that leaves only hand washing as a way to keep people safe.

In the last month, over 2,000 cases of variant-strain coronavirus have been recorded by the Department of State Health Services. Dallas/Fort Worth generally reports higher numbers of variant cases, but it's unclear how much that has to do with the metroplex testing at a higher rate that more rural areas.

With 70 percent of Texans still unprotected and variants appearing and spreading daily, the race is on, because scientists say between 70-90 percent of the population needs to be immune before herd immunity results. And since more than 20 percent of the population is comprised of children under 16, for whom the vaccine is not yet approved, the distance appears daunting to some.

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