SAN DIEGO — Thousands of maquiladora workers employed in Baja California by U.S. subsidiary companies will be vaccinated against COVID-19 as part of a first-of-its-kind cross-border pilot program announced this week.
“This is the first cross-border agreement that we have that aims to try to equalize vaccination rates on the northern border, especially in cities that have greater interconnection, such as Tijuana and San Diego,” Marcelo Ebrard, Mexico’s ministry of foreign relations, said Tuesday.
The pilot program, which started Monday, is a partnership between San Diego County; the Mexican Consulate; the University of California, San Diego Health; and six U.S.-owned companies.
The vaccine was supplied by the state of California at the request of the county, officials said.
Up to 10,000 Johnson & Johnson doses will be administered in a seven-nonconsecutive-day span by medical personnel from UCSD at the San Ysidro border crossing.
Maquiladora workers in Baja California are taken by bus to the border near the PedWest crossing where they receive the vaccine. They are monitored before they are taken back.
If the program succeeds, it could be expanded, authorities said.
“For years, the San Diego-Tijuana border region has been a successful model of binational cooperation,” Mexican Consul Carlos González Gutierrez said at a news conference.
“Local leaders in the region have always demonstrated that thinking outside the box is necessary to overcome difficult challenges, and the COVID-19 pandemic is no exception”.
The participating companies — Poly, Compañía Embotelladora del Fuerte-Coca Cola, Jacuzzi, Flex, Calle Center Services International-CCSI and Sempra-IEnova — will cover all costs associated with the vaccines, officials said.
There are around 1,000 maquiladoras operating in Baja California, about half of which are U.S.-owned, said Luis Manuel Hernández, president of the maquiladora association, INDEX.
In total, maquiladora plants in Baja California employ around 420,000 people, he added.
As of Tuesday, around 68% of San Diego County residents had received at least one COVID-19 vaccine, according to data from the San Diego County Health and Human Services Agency.
In Baja California, vaccination is currently available for people over 50, health and education personnel, as well as pregnant women. Nearly 850,000 doses have been administrated per statistics from the State’s Secretary of Health.
Hernández noted that the ages of most maquiladora workers range from 20 to 35 years old.
With this partnership, authorities from both sides of the border also seek to boost the border’s economic reactivation.
“We started, six to eight months ago, talking to the private sector on how to help our people with their health and the economy of our state. We have to accelerate the pace of recovery from this pandemic because our health and our economy are hurting,” Luis Lutteroth, president of the Tijuana’s Development Council, said in a release.
The U.S. Department of Homeland Security recently extended restrictions on nonessential travel at the U.S.-Mexico land border for at least one more month. Cross-border trade has not been affected by this measure, as it is considered essential.
Mexican officials announced they are in talks with the U.S. to ease restrictions “based on the COVID-19 spread rate and on the number of vaccines applied on both sides of the border.”
San Diego County Supervisor Nora Vargas said this program benefits both sides of the border because by assisting one community in need, both are being helped.
“We have often said that health care has no borders,” Vargas said. “Our communities in the South Bay have been directly impacted by the fact that we no longer have our communities from Tijuana coming across the border.”
“We are going to make sure that all San Diegans have access to vaccines, but also we are going to be good neighbors and ensure that our binational region is taking care of, because this is what’s community is all about,” Vargas said.
