Community COVID-19 vaccination clinics on the rise

By Nelda Briones

Community COVID-19 vaccination clinics have started popping up in the valley.

The community clinics have been administering doses to the Tier 1A, which are frontline healthcare workers and residents of long-term care facilities. They have also started distributing to Tier 1B, which are people age 65 and older and people age 18 years and older with at least one chronic medical condition. Those chronic medical conditions include cancer, chronic kidney disease, COPD, heart conditions, organ transplantation, obesity, type-two diabetes, and pregnancy.

Hidalgo County held the first clinic at the Mercedes RGV Livestock Show Grounds on January 5, 2020. Lines formed the day before as 800 vaccines were to be distributed to the community. By the morning of the vaccine distribution, they already had all the people they needed for the 800 doses.

La Joya also had a vaccine distribution on Thursday January 7, 2020 and quickly reached capacity by the morning of their distribution (800 doses).On Friday, January 8, 2020, Cameron County held its vaccination clinic starting with 1,000 doses of the vaccine. It was a first-come first-serve basis.

Like the other clinics, they were full by the morning of distribution. Later in the afternoon, however, another unexpected shipment of 1,000 doses arrived. Two thousand people were vaccinated.

On Tuesday, January 12, 2020, DHR Health had a mass vaccination clinic at the Bert Ogden Arena in Edinburg where they distributed 6,500 doses of the vaccine. Right now, the DSHS website states only Phases 1A and 1B are being vaccinated at this time.

Go to www.dshs.texas.gov for more information on vaccine distributions links where you could check for vaccine availability.