Skewed numbers: Valley's high vaccination rate factors outside groups

Dec. 12—HARLINGEN — Public health officials driving one of the state's highest COVID-19 vaccination rates are aiming at vaccinating more than 100 percent of the official population in this border region long known as an international crossroads.

In Cameron County, they're not just vaccinating residents counted in the Census.

The county's vaccination rate of 76.8 percent represents fully vaccinated residents 5 and older while including an unknown number of undocumented immigrants, hundreds of migrant children being held in area detention centers along with thousands of Winter Texans and Mexican nationals.

"Along the border, we can reach a 100-percent vaccination rate based on our Census tract but some people are not counted on our Census tract so we're going to supersede that," Josh Ramirez, the city's health director, said Monday. "The goal is to get 100 percent vaccinated, understanding the numbers are going to be skewed. It's going to be over 100 percent counting those factors."

How much other population groups are skewing the Valley's high vaccination rates is unclear.

"With the Mexican nationals, the undocumented minors in the shelters, the Winter Texans and the immigration situation, they're definitely having an impact," Thomas Garza, a pharmacist at his family-owned Medicine Shoppe in San Benito, said. "They're definitely moving the needle."

Border counties topping the state's vaccination rates

Counties straddling the Texas-Mexico border deal with similar demographics.

In Texas, the five counties boasting the state's highest vaccination rates all run along the Mexican border, including Presidio, Maverick, Webb, El Paso and Cameron, whose vaccination rate ranks as the state's fifth highest, according to Stacker.

Meanwhile, the top 10 Texas counties with the highest vaccinations rates include Starr, ranked as sixth, and Hidalgo, coming in ninth on Stacker's list.

Vaccination program open to all

In the United States, where the federal government has spent billions developing history's biggest vaccination campaign, the program sets no residency requirements.

"At the end of the day, we're public health and we want people to get vaccinated," Esmeralda Guajardo, the county's health administrator, said. "It's like any other public health threat."

The country's vaccination program offers the vaccine free of residency requirements as part of the drive to reach so-called herd immunity.

"CDC does not require United States citizenship for individuals to receive a COVID-19 vaccine," the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention states on its website. "CDC's policy and goals are to ensure that everyone can receive vaccine without barriers to the greatest extent possible. Ensuring that all persons in the United States can receive the COVID-19 vaccine helps fulfill the public health goal of achieving herd immunity, which would decrease the potential that any individual who cannot receive the vaccine, or for whom the vaccine is ineffective, will get COVID-19."

High population numbers

Across the Valley, health officials vaccinated many of the 100,000 Winter Texans who were staying here last winter after the federal government opened its vaccination program last December.

Meanwhile, health officials are reaching into the community to try to vaccinate the area's undocumented immigrants, working with church groups, Spanish language radio stations and food pantries to help spread information regarding the city's vaccination program, Ramirez said.

Many of the same Mexican shoppers who help boost the Valley's economy are coming here to get their vaccinations.

Since the federal government opened its vaccination program last Dec. 14, state health officials have vaccinated 59,727 people listing Mexican addresses on consent forms, or 0.3 percent of the 18,730,805 who have received vaccinations, Anton stated.

At the San Benito pharmacy which has vaccinated thousands, Garza said Mexican nationals make up a small part of his clientele.

"I think the more affluent Mexican nationals are getting in," he said. "I would say it's less than 1 percent, if not 1 percent of our business. Some of them are flying in just to get the vaccine and going back."

In Mexico, the country's vaccination rate stands at 51.8, according to Pharmaceutical Technology.

Last month, county health officials spotted an uptick in vaccinations after the government re-opened Brownsville's international bridges, Guajardo said.

"When the bridge opened, we did see a little spike, we saw a little bump," she said. "A lot of them were children who attended school in the United States who live in Mexico."

Valley residents drive high vaccination rates

Across the region, the Valley's residents are driving the area's high vaccination rates, health officials said.

Since the coronavirus pandemic hit here in March 2020, about 5,963 Valley residents have died as a result of complications from COVID-19.

During the summer of 2020, the Valley's death toll rate ranked among the nation's highest as a result of the local population's high rates of obesity, diabetes and hypertension.

"We've seen great response from our citizens — our core residents," Ramirez said. "They've seen the devastation in their families. They're taken the message very seriously and the numbers show it."

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