HARLINGEN — The city is getting help as officials plan to hold more COVID-19 vaccination clinics aimed at cutting wait time.
At Texas State Technical College, student nurses are ready to help.
“They will be a great benefit as we have more vaccine available,” Josh Ramirez, Harlingen’s public health director, said.
In a March 3 meeting, city commissioners entered into an agreement with the college to provide nurses to help administer vaccinations at the city’s upcoming clinics.
Meanwhile, officials are planning to begin receiving more vaccine doses as manufacturers ramp up production.
“I think that we will be receiving, hopefully soon, a lot more vaccine and we will be needing a lot more help and so this is lining things up to be able to effectively and efficiently continue our program of administering our vaccinations,” Mayor Chris Boswell said during the March 3 meeting.
High demand
Now, Ramirez is looking for nursing students certified in administering vaccines.
For students, it’s on-the-job training.
“As we receive more vaccines and open more vaccination clinics, TSTC nursing students who are licensed and certified by the state to administer vaccines will help us,” he said.
Meanwhile, he’s looking for other nursing students to help file vaccination data.
“Those who are not certified yet to administer vaccine can help us with paperwork and data entry of patient information,” he said. “That kind of experience they can benefit from as well.”
Boosting manpower
The nursing students will boost manpower to help clinics administer more vaccines, cutting people’s wait times.
“The more vaccine administrators we have, the more people we can process at one time,” Ramirez said.
During last month’s drive-thru clinic, officials ran two traffic lanes under the Harlingen Convention Center’s wide covered entryway, with a team of nurses administering vaccines to people sitting in eight cars at a time.
The more nursing students the college can place in the program, the more vaccines the clinics can administer — and the more waiting time they can cut.
“We’re still in discussions on how many students are ready to administer vaccine and provide their assistance,” he said.
Now, Ramirez is mulling vaccinating people in as many as 10 cars at a time.
“If we get that up to another eight or 10, that would expedite the vaccination process for everybody,” he said.
Doubling up on vaccine
For the two vaccination clinics the city has held so far, Cameron County officials, who have been receiving weekly state shipments of 6,000 doses, have set aside a total of 2,000 doses.
“We have been told we should receive an increase in vaccine up to double the amount we’ve been receiving, but we haven’t seen that yet,” Ramirez said. “We’re hoping we can increase that to 2,000 for our next clinic. We’re ready. We can process 2,000 very easily.”
