San Antonio Express-News (Sunday)
THE COVETED JAB
‘Vaccine tourism’ from Mexico a needed windfall
Cover Story: ‘Vaccine tourism’ a pandemic-era windfall for San Antonio.
Alberto and Patricia Flores arrived from Mexico with plans to see the River Walk and do some shopping over the weekend. First, they stopped at Walgreens for doses of COVID-19 vaccine.
The couple, like hundreds of other people flying daily from Mexico to San Antonio, are vaccine tourists on a quest to receive jabs in the arm and hopedfor protection against coronavirus — and usually to shop and dine while they’re here.
The Mexican tourism boom involves more than packed commercial jets carrying members of Mexico’s middle class. Private planes occupied by the country’s moneyed class also have been arriving for months in search of vaccines. Many see few other choices.
“COVID is a big problem in Mexico. I know several people who have died,” Alberto Flores said after he and his wife cleared U.S. Customs at San Antonio International Airport on a recent Friday morning.
The couple — he’s 48 and she’s 37 — said they were unable to find the vaccine in Mexico City. But they learned from friends it was easy to get in San Antonio — all they had to do was go online to make a vaccine reservation.
“We’re getting the J&J,” Alberto Flores said, noting the oneshot Johnson & Johnson vaccine would not require a return visit to San Antonio.
Only 11.7 percent of the Mexican population has been vaccinated, while about 44 percent in the U.S. have gotten the required jabs, according to data from Johns Hopkins University.
Another factor driving Mexican tourists to San Antonio: Their home country is using a variety of vaccines, including Russian shots not approved by the World Health Organization. Some aren’t sure a shot at home will protect them.
No one is tracking just how many Mexican nationals are coming to San Antonio for vaccinations, but the number is easily hundreds a day.
Across the region, some cities are capitalizing on the pandemic-era tourism windfall, but San Antonio hasn’t yet. A marketing push has led to increased flights to Laredo, for example, and the trend is being seen in other cities as well.
“We are getting a lot of people coming from Mexico,” said Bill Phillips, senior vice president and chief information officer at University Health. It’s been running the vaccination hub at Wonderland of the Americas mall.
Ample doses are available, he said, especially as the number of locals seeking shots has slowed.
‘Everyone is coming’
Several members of the flight crew on the packed VivaAerobus 182-seat jetliner that carried the Flores to San Antonio on a recent Friday morning said Mexicans seeking the vaccine made up most of the passengers on the flight.
“It’s difficult to find the
COVID vaccine in Mexico City,“the pilot said, “so everyone is coming to San Antonio.”
Crew members are well aware of the situation — several of them had been vaccinated on earlier visits to San Antonio. The pilot declined to be identified because he was not authorized to speak for the airline.
Mexican airlines run as many as 11 planes a day to San Antonio, primarily from Mexico City and Monterrey in Northern Mexico. As vaccine tourism has increased in recent months, extra flights have been added to accommodate the increased demand.
Several dozen Mexican nationals were interviewed for this report over the past several weeks at San Antonio International Airport. They were passengers on the three Mexican airlines that serve the city — AeroMexico, Volaris and VivaAerobus — and most said they had come to San Antonio mainly to get the vaccine.
Among them were Raymond and Andrea Leal. Raymond, a law student in Mexico City, and his sister, an undergraduate psychology major, were following in the footsteps of their parents, who had flown to San Antonio several months earlier to get vaccine shots at an H-E-B.
The 19-year-old law student said he and his sister, 21, were making it a one-day trip. They left Mexico City at 7 a.m. on June 5, landed in San Antonio and took an Uber to an H-E-B su
permarket on the South Side to get the J&J vaccine. They grabbed lunch at Olive Garden then headed back to the airport for their return trip to Mexico City — and a late-night arrival.
“A lot of people are coming from Mexico City to San Antonio for the vaccine — if you have the money,” Raymond Leal said.
Because of COVID-19 travel restrictions, flying is the only way to enter the U.S. from Mexico; the land border remains closed to all but essential workers.
Leal said the quick jaunt to San Antonio cost about $800 for the two of them, with airfare the biggest expense.
While it’s good that Mexican nationals who can’t obtain the vaccine at home are able to get it in San Antonio, the fact it’s only available to those who can afford to fly creates a system of inequity, said Leighton Ku, director of the Center for Health Policy Research at the Milken Institute School of Public Health at George Washington University.
But Ku, who grew up in San Antonio, said similar inequities exist in his native city. For example, he said low-income San Antonians probably lack internet connections to book appointments, don’t have transportation to get to a vaccine site and find fewer vaccination sites close to home.
Bill Trevino, port director for the U.S. Customs and Border Patrol station at San Antonio International Airport, said Mexican nationals usually cite one of three reasons for visiting: receiving the COVID-19 vaccine, shopping or visiting relatives.
“Those are the three we heard quite a bit” over the past several months, he said.
Private jets and limos
Vaccine tourists are also making the trip on private jets. A limousine driver interviewed at the airport said she had taken dozens of Mexican nationals to vaccine sites in the past several months — usually at an H-E-B,