NUECES COUNTY, Texas — Nueces County Judge Barbara Canales said we still need about 290 health professionals inside our hospitals so that more bed space could be opened up.
In the meantime, the International Medical Corps have come back to town and are helping to fill some of the manpower shortage on the vaccination side of the COVID fight.
"What we decided was that we were going to send a team down here to help vaccinate and the good thing is that the National Guard looks like they're going to be here until December so what they're going to utilize us for, trying to get us out in the community," Dr. John Roberts with the IMC said.
You'll be seeing the corps around town at restaurants and other places in the hope of vaccinating people right there and then.
"If it's something really small, we could do something like a van, but if it's a bigger event, so say a sports stadium or a concert or a bigger event, we'll actually bring full tent structures and set up whole vaccine lanes," Dr. Roberts said.
Canales is happy to see the organization back in town after it came here last year and helped out with the summer surge.
"The relationship that brought us those tents now brings us this incredible strike force team to assist public health and more importantly they were instrumental in getting much needed equipment to Christus Spohn last summer," Canales said.
Dr. Roberts said that the goal in this effort is to try and get more people vaccinated.
"Upwards of 98 to 99% of all hospitalized patients are unvaccinated," Dr. Roberts said. "Now think about that, think about how effective a vaccine would have to be to be that good to keep people out of the hospital. There's no other vaccine that we know of that is that good."
Dr. Roberts also said his organization is going to be here at least for the next couple of weeks and depending on the situation, they may end up staying longer.
He is going to be leaving at the end of the week and heading to Haiti. His organization is already on the ground there and is setting up a field hospital to help those folks after that earthquake struck there.
As for our health crisis, he said the best medicine to deal with COVID is what's in those vaccination shots.