The Brownwood City Council on Monday unanimously approved two actions in an effort to potentially increase the number of COVID vaccinations among city residents.

The first was the authorization to allocate American Rescue Plan Funds in the amount of $15,000 for COVID-19 response and vaccination efforts.

The second authorized City Manager Emily Crawford to sign an agreement for additional funding of $290,000 for activities to ensure community engagement in targeted communities disproportionately impacted by COVID-19 through the Texas Department of State Health Services.

Lisa Dick with the Brownwood-Brown County Health Department stated during Monday’s meeting that with the additional $290,000 three full-time employees will be hired to interact with the community in an effort to encourage more residents to receive a COVID vaccine. The grant runs through May 2023. The new employees, however, will not be allowed to administer those vaccines.

“The way I see it is it’s a community outreach and educational arm of the actual vaccines,” Crawford said in an explanation to the city council. “They would be the people going into the community working with churches, working with neighborhoods, working with clubs, any type of group of people to coordinate and educate to help our vaccination rates go up.”

Referring to the request for APR funds, which the City of Brownwood has not yet received but expects to in the coming days, the recent increase in positive COVID numbers has led to the Health Department has been over-run with people seeking a vaccine. The grants the Health Department has received for COVID response to this point do not allow expenses directly related to the administration of vaccines.

The Health Department plans on providing weekly vaccine clinics with extended hours to meet the public demand., but needs funding to pay medial staff to provide the vaccines and related supplies. The ARP allows expenses for vaccination efforts. In addition, the Health Department will need to build a partition wall for additional office space necessitated by the COVID response.

Other grants focused on COVID will not cover this expense. The Health Departments expects the construction to be $2,000. The needs for COVID response have been unpredictable, therefore, the Health Department stated it will use the requested funds wisely and will request funding in the future, as necessary, to provide the services requested by the public.

“The funding would mainly be used for us to staff positions and then ancillary supplies that are not provided with the vaccine,” said Dick, who added those positions would be part-time and likely assisting with vaccination clinics.

Dick also stated that Saturday, Sunday and Monday combined the Health Department received 125 positive COVID results, 17 people are hospitalized and multiple deaths have been reported, though she did not give an exact number on those who have passed. Last week six deaths, and 186 positive cases were reported, and Dick stated 19 of those 186 cases were breakthrough cases – those who have been fully vaccinated yet still contracted COVID.