Spoke to Gallegos and Cervantes. What I’ve been hearing is that Doña Ana and Las Cruces Counties have been sending letters to MLG to get more vaccines in our area. There has been talk about more super sites opening up in Las Cruces and other areas. CVS and Walgreens are starting to get people vaccinated. There is talk about getting more small distribution sites. There was talk that people were upset about the lack of vaccines, have people calmed down? People have gotten more access to the vaccines. The VA has written letters to some counties. In Anthony proper, there is some concern that the distance to drive has been restrictive to getting vaccinated. It would be better to have many super sites in the rural communities. How are you hearing about the hesitancy that people have around the vaccine? Lots of people here in Anthony say that they will refuse to take the vaccines as they become available. Hearing this from the working class. They are afraid that if they get sick, they won’t have money coming into their household. The people that do have reactions typically have underlying conditions. 

There has been a major effort to get local people ready to give and receive the vaccine. The more that we can get from local communities, the more effective those efforts will be.

The big thing from folks that I talk to is that they wish there were more vaccines allotted to the people who live near Texas. There’s a lot of traffic that occurs between rural NM and Texas.

There is a big group of children who are coming back to school that won’t be vaccinated. The school should be providing vaccinations before people go back to school. They’ve just started testing for children, so we don’t have good data on how those vaccines affect children. What about the teachers? There are a lot of teachers who don’t want to start teaching yet because vaccinating them has not been a priority.

There have been lots of efforts to make sure that schools are clean. It’s been a double-edged sword - those students in special education need to get back. They’re not learning as much as they can. School is their safe place. Glad that our superintendent is considering the parents’ opinion, but some of those kids need to get back.

There is a concern from parents about “what if their kids get sick?” but it’s been good to get them back on the whole. There was an outbreak on a school bus in Chaparral, but that’s the only one that I’ve heard about.