PRESIDIO COUNTY — Nearly 65% of Presidio County residents over the age of 16 have been able to get at least one dose of a vaccine against coronavirus as of Tuesday, making it the highest vaccinated county in the state per capita, outpacing the next highest county by almost 20%.
With yesterday marking one year since Presidio County Judge Cinderela Guevara declared a local disaster in the county because of the growing spread of coronavirus, officials are speculating about what has contributed to the successful vaccine rollout and celebrating the county’s successes in reaching an important milestone in overcoming COVID-19.
In the week before Presidio County first declared a disaster, Marfa resident Jennie Lyn Hamilton found herself in El Paso, eating a plate of enchiladas at L&J Cafe. The dance conference she was supposed to attend at University of Texas in El Paso as part of her job as director of Marfa Live Arts had just been canceled as a precaution against the virus. At the time, Hamilton didn’t realize the meal would be her last time eating indoors at a restaurant for an entire year.
Soon, Presidio County locals would go into quarantine for the first time, while many businesses began closing their doors due to the uncertainty that plagued the early days of the coronavirus crisis. Others would lose their jobs, and worse, some would soon lose loved ones to the virus.
“We were paralyzed with the fear of it all,” Hamilton recalled of the early days of the pandemic. “I had to stop reading the news incessantly. I had to adapt, pivot and reconfigure life.”
For Neria Lopez, it has been a tough year of reconfiguring too. The pandemic forced Lopez to quit her job as a frontline worker at Stripes in Marfa. Living on a ranch in Valentine, she felt the risk of exposing her family, young children and other ranch workers to the coronavirus was too high. “I was risking them by going into town and back to the ranch,” she said.
Nine months after Lopez quit her job, the first dose of vaccine in Presidio County would be given to a resident on December 23, 2020. Since that day, 3,400 doses of vaccine have been sent to the county, where the state estimates 5,069 individuals over the age of 16 are living.
But more Presidio County residents have gotten the shot than all of the 3,400 doses allocated to the area, meaning many have been able to get the vaccine outside of Presidio County. It’s one reason officials believe that the area has been so highly vaccinated: residents are willing to travel as far as El Paso, Pecos, Fort Stockton or Midland-Odessa to get inoculated against the virus that has killed at least 24 county residents this year.
Marfa Clinic’s Don Culbertson also credited the high vaccination rate to hubs in Midland and Monahans, which he said, “stepped up and started sharing their vaccine” with Presidio County, adding to the influx of shots to the area. Residents with high medical literacy, he said, were also able to access the vaccine more easily than those who might struggle with the healthcare system or the online signups that some vaccinators are requiring.
Culbertson was hesitant to laud the area too much for its vaccination rate, pointing to disparities between Marfa and Presidio in accessing the vaccine. While the City of Presidio is more than double the size of Marfa, the 79845 zip code that serves Presidio and Candelaria has received only 2,696 doses, while the Marfa and Shafter zip code 79843 has gotten 1,828, according to state data.
“Just because we’re super well-vaccinated, I don’t think public health officials and [Mayor John] Ferguson feel like we’re anywhere close to providing the needs of Presidio yet,” Culbertson said over the weekend.
Ferguson thinks that Presidio’s larger size is the reason they haven’t had as high a percent of vaccinations as Marfa so far. He estimated that Presidio and Marfa were getting a nearly 50/50 split of the available vaccines, despite one being larger than the other.
Ferguson was feeling more optimistic this week. There were 500 vaccines available Monday and Tuesday at the Preventative Care Health Services clinic in Presidio, where PCHS CEO Linda Molinar said that enough doses were available that people could arrive at that clinic without appointments for the first time.
“Presidio is getting to that point where Marfa was a week ago, where the lines are starting to come down,” said Mayor Ferguson, who was on site at the clinic on Tuesday. “That indicates to me we’re starting to get to a point where supply and demand is starting to level out.” The state has loosened its guidelines to say anyone 50 and older is eligible for vaccination now, but locally, many have expanded to vaccinating anyone over 16 who wants it.
While some are still waiting their turn, or looking forward to their second dose, many residents have reason to breathe a sigh of relief. Hamilton, who had been hesitant to receive the vaccine, finally took the Pfizer shot. Though she suffered side effects like a migraine, she eventually reached full vaccination.
On the one year anniversary of her pre-lockdown lunch, she was in El Paso once more, making an overdue trip to the dentist. COVID had delayed or canceled many things for Hamilton in the past year, and she has often worried for her sister, a nurse in San Antonio.
Last week in El Paso, Hamilton celebrated her full vaccination in the best way she could: a return to indoor dining with an enchilada lunch at L&J Cafe. “I definitely think it’s hopeful, and I feel a lot better, but I am cautiously optimistic and watching what is happening elsewhere in the world,” Hamilton said. She hopes the United States will assist other countries in reaching their vaccination goals as well, saying it can’t be ignored because of the way the virus – and now its variants – are able to spread globally. “Because this all started in one place, and look at where we are now.”
Lopez got her first and only dose of Johnson & Johnson’s COVID-19 vaccine on Tuesday at the Marfa Clinic, 365 days after the county disaster declaration. Sitting in the waiting room after the injection, she said she was looking forward to the confidence the Johnson & Johnson vaccine would give her. “Even if I get COVID, it’s not going to be too much,” Lopez said. She’s eager to finally begin her job search, no longer so worried about infecting those closest to her.
“It’s the middle of March and we’re way more vaccinated than I thought,” Judge Guevara told the county commissioners court on Tuesday in an update on vaccinations. “I thought we were just going to be forgotten, but we weren’t.”
