Travis County mobile COVID-19 vaccine clinics to close at end of year

The Travis County Vaccine Collaborative—a program that rolled out emergency vaccines to residents in the most vulnerable ZIP codes—is closing at the end of the year.

Since the program was launched in February 2021, Ascension Seton, in partnership with the Collaborative, distributed over 430,000 doses of COVID-19 vaccines. This includes 137,304 doses Travis County distributed while partnering with CommUnity Care, Travis County Emergency Services District No. 11, Ascension Seton and Central Texas Allied Health Institute.

Of the 24,518 doses administered by Travis County through Ascension, 71% of the vaccine recipients self-identified as Hispanic or Latino; 44% said their primary language was Spanish; and 41% were receiving their first or second doses, according to a news release.

The Collaborative began when county judges from Travis, Hays, Bastrop and Caldwell counties combined forces to distribute vaccines to residents through a mass drive-thru clinic at the Circuit of the Americas.

The Collaborative then switched from drive-thru clinics to mobile pop-ups at schools, grocery stores, churches and other community sites.

However, with vaccines more readily available throughout the community, the need for additional pop-up clinics has dwindled, a Travis County spokesperson said. In recent months, the Collaborative pop-up vaccine clinics have distributed an average of 100-180 doses per week, compared to the thousands they were distributing in 2021.

“I’m incredibly proud of all the work that went into delivering hundreds of thousands of doses of COVID-19 vaccines to Travis County neighborhoods that had higher rates of COVID-19 cases, hospitalizations, and deaths,” Travis County Judge Andy Brown said in a news release. “Vaccines have been a life-saving tool in this pandemic, and thanks to all of our community partners, we were able to increase Travis County’s vaccination rates especially among the most vulnerable.”