Lack of Juarez Vaccines Threaten El Paso Herd Immunity

Vaccines are rolling out hot and heavy in El Paso! Even with the pause on the Johnson and Johnson vaccine, the Borderland is seeing an increase in vaccine allocation. Well, most of the Borderland. Unfortunately Juarez isn't able to keep up with the vaccines which is causing a problem here in El Paso.

Dr. Hector Ocaranza, the El Paso City/County Health Authority said Monday:

That herd immunity has to be achieved either by having immunity from natural infection or immunity from the vaccination. So, we still have some immunity from that natural infection but we want to continue immunizing as many people as possible and hopefully Mexico continues to receive the vaccine.

The concern comes from relatives and friends that live south of the border. Ocaranza added:

We have close links, we have relatives on both sides of the border. We don’t want to see the pain and the suffering that we saw especially with that large surge that we had.

We know how devastating COVID-19 can be here in the Borderland. We were the talk of the country early on and cases seemed to surge higher and higher every day. Now we're looking for herd immunity as vaccines roll out, but we have to remember we're a community of multiple countries and states. There is still a big threat of reinfection from new strains of COVID-19 when a large portion of the population isn't getting vaccinated. South of the border they are just now really starting to get the vaccines rolled out, which puts them about 4 months behind El Paso.