State officials are deploying mobile vaccination teams to Starr County as well as four other rural counties across Texas.
As part of an effort to ramp up vaccinations in underserved areas, the mobile teams were created as part of the new State Mobile Vaccine Pilot Program, Gov. Greg Abbott and the Texas Division of Emergency Management announced in a news release Wednesday.
The teams will consist of Texas National Guard personnel who will administer the vaccines in Starr, DeWitt, Marion, Real, and Sherman counties.
The teams are prepared to begin vaccinations on Thursday, according to the release which added that TDEM is working with county officials to schedule their deployment.
“The State Mobile Vaccine Pilot Program will help us ramp up vaccination efforts among homebound Texans, Texans 65 years of age or older, and among communities in need,” Abbott stated in the release. “I thank TDEM, the Texas National Guard, as well as our participating city and county officials for working together on this important project.”
Abbott continued, “We will continue to develop strategies to vaccinate more Texans and keep our communities safe.”
The announcement comes as Starr County officials have appealed to the state for larger allocations of vaccine doses.
Starr County Judge Eloy Vera said Tuesday that had not yet received a response to their request.
Through the seventh week of vaccine distribution, providers in the county have received a total of 2,300 doses of the vaccine manufactured by Moderna.
Starr County Memorial Hospital is expected to receive a low-temperature refrigerator capable of storing the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine but it’s unclear whether the state will actually allocate any doses of that vaccine to the county.
But if the county, itself, were to need freezers for the Pfizer vaccine, Vera said they would be able to obtain them from the state.
“I did have communication with TDEM, with Mr. Tony Peña, and he did tell me that the state emergency management did have freezers available if we requested them,” Vera said.
The vaccines that will be distributed by the National Guard as part of the State Mobile Vaccine Pilot Program will be administered Saturday at Rio Grande City High School.
Vaccinations will be done by appointment for those who pre-registered with the county.
Only individuals who fall under Tier 1A and Tier 1B — healthcare workers, people 65 years old or older, and people 16 or older with a chronic medical condition — are currently eligible to receive the vaccine.
