Visiting doctors, nurses and other medical professionals may soon leave the Rio Grande Valley due to fewer COVID patients ending up in local hospitals.

The extra medical staff was needed after the holidays, but the Valley’s current COVID-related hospitalization rate is down to 7%.

“[The Texas Division of Emergency Management] has started, along with hospital preparedness programs, to demobilize a few of the hospital personnel in the hospitals that are serving COVID patients.” Dr. Emilie Prot - regional medical director for the department of state health services - said. “They have been in communication with the county judges and it's going to be in phases. It's not going to be all in one. And so they're working on that now."