Local partnership aims to provide COVID-19 vaccines for homeless residents, those in poverty

WACO, Texas (KWTX) - Many people in Central Texas dealing with poverty and homelessness are having a hard time getting their COVID-19 vaccines.

Most appointments have to be scheduled online and many people don’t have internet access.

“On a weekly basis we serve close to 2,000 people with all of our programs, so it was an easy thing to have folks we work with reach out to others they know,” said Carlton Willis with Mission Waco.

Mission Waco helps people in the underserved community, and Ascension Providence is working with the organization to get their clients vaccinated.

Mission Waco is educating them about the safety and effectiveness of the vaccine, helping them with paperwork, and transporting them to vaccine sites.

So far at least 210 people have been vaccinated through the partnership.

There are other people in the area outside of the reach of Mission Waco dealing with the same challenges.

And officials with Ascension Providence say they’re working to get them vaccinated too.

We spoke with Dr. Richard Haskett, Chief Medical Officer of Ascension Medical Group Waco.

He said, “we wanted to bring some of those barriers down and Mission Waco has helped us reach a patient population in a better way than what we thought we’d done before this partnership. Clearly this is a challenge we as the greater Waco community need to continue to work through, and are working on.”

As of Wednesday, Ascension Providence provided 32,707 vaccines to people in groups 1A and 1B.

More than 2,400 doses have gone to local school district employees.

People in group 1C, ages 50 to 64, can now make appointments too.

And Ascension Providence is working with several local agencies to provide vaccines.

Copyright 2021 KWTX. All rights reserved.