The Texas Tribune
Last summer, counties on the Texas-Mexico border were among the nation’s hardest hit by COVID-19. Now those counties are seeing some of the highest vaccination rates in the state.
From El Paso to Brownsville, every county along the border is outpacing the state average for the percentage of residents fully vaccinated against COVID-19. Of the 39 Texas counties currently above the state average, more than a third are border counties, according to state numbers.
Statewide, 35% of the total population has been fully vaccinated, including 42% of eligible Texans 12 and older. Three of the four counties in the Rio Grande Valley have already surpassed 40% of their total population fully vaccinated — including Hidalgo County with 43%, Cameron County with 45% and Starr County with nearly 50%. In Webb County, which includes Laredo, 47% of residents are fully vaccinated, and El Paso County has fully vaccinated about 45% of its population.
The biggest motivator for residents to show up in such large numbers for the shot, locals say, is that the region suffered so much death during COVID-19 surges. In El Paso County, more than 2,700 residents were reported to have died from the virus, and COVID-19 deaths were so frequent in the fall that inmates were used as labor to help deal with the bodies. Hidalgo County reported more than 2,800 deaths, and at one point last summer, 1 in 10 COVID-19 deaths in Texas had happened in the county of nearly 900,000 people. Read the full story by the Tribune’s Karen Brooks Harper and Carla Astudillo.
