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Odessa city council approves hospital partnership for COVID testing, flu shot access

The agreement will hopefully take some of the strain off the hospitals while improving access for citizens.

ODESSA, Texas — UPDATE: Watch city officials discuss this update below.

The City of Odessa made some big decisions during its Tuesday night board meeting.

One of those decisions was the council members approving an agreement between the city and Medical Center Hospital/Odessa Regional Medical Center for a community-wide COVID-19 and flu vaccination program. 

This partnership will provide individuals access to get tested for COVID as well as receive a flu shot.  The cost will be around $1 million dollars to keep the program running from Nov. 1 to Dec. 30, but will hopefully prevent stress on the hospitals.

"The proposal was to say let's improve access to the community, let's give them covid tests when they want it and hopefully where they want it and spread out the locations throughout the city," said Rohith Saravanan, Chief Medical Officer for ORMC.

That money will come out of the city's CARES act money.

The council also voted to purchase 17 new traffic signal cabinets. This purchase will allow 14 of the current cabinets in the city to be replaced with three spares in case of emergencies.

This purchase will amount to roughly $230,480.

Another agenda item approved will make downtown a bit brighter this holiday season-council members voted to approve the purchase of holiday decorations for the parks department.

These decorations will includes the purchase of a new display for Starbright Village and two spherical trees to be placed at the entrance of the convention center.

Funds for those purchases will be taken from the 2020-2021 hotel occupancy tax funds given to the department.

Finally, the council will wait to vote on whether or not a new metal building will be built at Fire Station #5.

Chief John Alvarez with Odessa Fire Rescue says that building will house the EUV trailer and truck as well as any new and used PPE that is not currently in use. 

According to the bid presented to the city council, Odessa Fire Rescue would be using supplemental funds for this construction, which will cost approximately $65,545.

"We're just simply running out of room at this point, we do have an emergency utility vehicle that's located out at station five so we'll be moving that out of the truck room and store it in that building and get it out of the way where it needs to be stored," said Fire Chief John Alvarez.

"Also one of the things we're looking at is moving all of our PPE to this building so we can better account for those pieces of equipment," said Alvarez.

    

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