RAYMONDVILLE — For weeks, Willacy County residents called for COVID-19 vaccination clinics across this farming region whose COVID-19 death rate ranked among the nation’s top 10 during the pandemic’s deadly summer.
Inside the county’s offices, County Judge Aurelio Guerra was working with Emergency Management Coordinator Frank Torres to request state health officials send vaccine shipments to help local leaders set up clinics.
On Jan. 22 — more than a month after health officials launched the state’s vaccination program — the county held its first community vaccination clinic, administering 780 doses of the Moderna vaccine at Raymondville Early College High School.
“We’re behind everyone else in the Valley,” Raymondville Mayor Gilbert Gonzales said this week, referring to the state’s vaccine shipments.
Meanwhile, the county’s doctors have helped vaccinate residents, Torres said.
So far, about 2,700 residents have received their vaccines, or 17 percent of the county’s 22,000 population, he said.
Raymondville, Lyford clinics
Today, county officials will hold their biggest clinic, planning to administer 2,340 doses of the Pfizer vaccine — about three times the dosage level distributed during each of the county’s first two clinics.
The clinic, targeting people 65 and older, those 16 and older suffering underlying medical conditions, along with teachers, school employees and front-line health care workers, will run from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. at Raymondville Early College High School.
Then on Saturday, officials will hold a clinic featuring a mobile lab at the Lyford school district, planning to administer 240 doses of the Pfizer vaccine.
The clinic, targeting people 65 and older and those 16 and older suffering underlying medical conditions, will run from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m.
“They’ve been asking, ‘When are we getting it?’” Gonzales said of residents calling for the vaccine. “Here we are.”
As part of county officials’ plan to cut wait times, residents pre-registered for the two clinics.
“I just got my voucher,” Gonzales, 68, a heart patient who contracted COVID-19 in October, said as he and his wife Rosalinda planned to receive their vaccines.
“It’s going to be great for our county,” he said.
“This is probably getting us a little ahead of them population-wise,” Gonzales said, referring to other Valley counties which have received more vaccine shipments.
Local officials working as ‘team’
Since state health officials launched Texas’ vaccination program in mid December, county officials have been working to request vaccine shipments, Torres said.
“This is a plan the judge and I have been working on for months and it just came to fruition so the judge put it on a lightning-fast response boat,” he said, referring to this week’s vaccine shipments.
Last week, he said, four doctors’ clinics administered 400 vaccine doses.
“In Willacy County, the judge’s team approach to this pandemic is really working beautifully,” Torres said. “As part of one team, we’re working with every municipality and we’ve included every one of our school districts and local physicians,” he said.
After the two clinics, he said, officials expect 28 to 30 percent of the county’s population to have received the vaccine.
“Our goal is to have the vaccine available for every citizen who wants it,” Torres said. “Our goal is to help build herd immunity, so if we get 70 to 80 percent of the population, we’re there.”
State designates school district vaccine provider
During the county’s first vaccination clinic, Dr. Emily Prot, the state’s Region 11 medical director, said health officials hadn’t shipped the county vaccine because local leaders hadn’t signed on to serve as state-approved vaccine providers.
“There’s no hospital here,” she said during a Jan. 22 interview. “There was no place to store it.”
By early January, Raymondville school officials were working to make the district a vaccine provider, Ben Clinton, the district’s deputy superintendent, said.
“We’d been working on it for weeks,” he said.
On March 1, the district applied for the designation, he said.
The next day, health officials approved the district as a vaccine provider, he said.
Then on March 4, he said, state officials notified the district of its first “possible” shipment.
As part of the district’s plan, officials purchased a $5,000 13.8-cubic-foot pharmaceutical refrigerator capable of storing 10,000 vaccine doses and a $2,000 5.5-cubic-foot laboratory freezer with capacity to stow an additional 3,000 doses.
This week, health officials shipped the district 2,340 doses of the Pfizer vaccine.
“It’s three times the amount of dosage we’ve received in any other shipment,” Clinton said. “We told them, if they could give us 2,500, we could administer it in one day.”
High death toll
In Lyford, Saturday’s clinic will mark the first in the town where Mayor Wally Solis’ wife Juanita, 65, died July 14 of complications after contracting COVID-19.
Within four days, Solis buried his wife and her two cousins after they died of complications following coronavirus infections.
“I’m very grateful it’s happening,” Solis said, referring to the hometown clinic. “My wife’s death hurts — and the people who are gone because of this virus. My concern is everybody gets a shot.”
Last summer, the Rio Grande Valley’s COVID-19 cases soared, spiking hospitalization rates that pushed the region’s hospitals over capacity.
Based on its population, Willacy County’s COVID-19-related death toll ranked as the 10th-highest in the United States, the third-highest in Texas and the highest in the Valley last August, Gonzales said.
On Aug. 24, the county’s death rate had climbed to 5.17 percent — about 38 cases per 1,000 residents — while Cameron County’s rate stood at 2.89 percent, according to medpagetoday.
Across the Valley, some of the nation’s highest rates of obesity, diabetes and hypertension have helped lead to the region’s COVID-19-related death toll.
“We most certainly need all those vaccines,” Gonzales said, referring to this week’s vaccine shipments. “The safer our community is, the quicker we’ll get to normality. If they keep on coming like this, we can get normality sooner than later.”
