Why Tarrant County dropped vaccine incentive to pay residents $50 for COVID shot

After Tarrant County commissioners last week discussed the possibility of paying residents to take the COVID-19 vaccine, the idea has now stalled, officials said Tuesday.

The commissioners had been tossing around a plan to give residents $50 gift cards if they get vaccinated against the deadly virus. But after several commissioners expressed concerns at the Sept. 14 meeting, county Judge Glen Whitley said he doesn’t plan to revive the concept.

“If it’s going to be brought back up, it needs to be brought back up by one of the three that wasn’t really ready to move forward,” Whitley said Tuesday, referencing hesitation from commissioners Gary Fickes, J.D. Johnson and Devan Allen.

Fickes said at the commissioners’ Sept. 14 meeting that he didn’t think the incentive program would convince the vaccine-hesitant to take the shot. “I think it’s bad policy,” he said.

Allen also raised concerns about the effectiveness of the incentive, but she worried mostly that a $50 incentive wouldn’t be enough to convince people.

The county’s public health director, Vinny Taneja, said Tuesday that vaccine incentives have helped raise vaccination rates in some other areas, including other counties in Texas.

Harris County, home to the city of Houston, saw daily vaccines increase by six-fold after rolling out a $100 incentive for residents, The Texas Tribune reported.

But Taneja said incentives aren’t the only option.

“The data shows there’s an increase of some folks getting off the fence and trying to get vaccinated. But is that the only solution? I’m not quite convinced,” he said. “But like I said, we’re happy to try anything that’s available that will give us a boost.”

He added that the data is clear that the COVID-19 vaccines protect communities against the virus, and that there shouldn’t be any debate about whether people should get vaccinated.

With the commissioners apparently stepping back from the incentive idea, Whitley and Taneja said the county is focusing on ensuring that vaccines are easily accessible.

That’s the primary tactic the county has used during the past nine months. So far, 54% of all Tarrant County residents have received at least one dose of the vaccine, according to county data.

Taneja said Tuesday that the needle has been slowly moving, and vaccination rates are slowly increasing. But in some of the county’s ZIP codes, such as 76119, the vaccination rate is still below 40%.

“Every single person getting vaccinated is adding to that level of protection that we need in our community, and we’re lowering the risk of a ... raging outbreak,” Taneja said.

Tarrant County, like much of Texas, has been slammed with a COVID-19 surge in recent weeks. While the nationwide surge has been fueled in large part by the delta variant, regions with high vaccination rates, such as New England, have not been hit as hard.

Taneja said Tuesday that the county is still in the midst of the COVID-19 surge, although there are some hopeful signs. For instance, hospitalizations were at 1,094 on Monday after peaking early this month at 1,200. Still, the county’s hospitals are at above 90% capacity, and the virus is still spreading at a “high” rate.