photo by: Lauren Fox

A traffic manager directs a car from the arena to the pavilion at the Douglas County Fairgrounds on Jan. 29. COVID-19 vaccines were administered in the arena, and people were observed in the pavilion following their vaccinations.

Douglas County would not have enough staff to run its vaccination clinics without volunteers, and the county is seeking more of them as the clinics expand.

It’s a volunteer opportunity that participants have found rewarding and emotional, according to Douglas County’s deputy director of emergency management, Jillian Rodrigue.

“They keep coming out and want to be a part of moving the community forward,” she said. “Many people see the reactions of the folks that are coming through the line after they get the shot, and they are recognizing the impact getting that vaccine has on the community.”

Rodrigue said the county typically needs between 80 and 100 volunteers a week and that duties include traffic control, checking people in and monitoring people in the observation area. Volunteers who are clinically certified may also administer vaccines.

The time commitment varies but could be between six and seven hours, Rodrigue said. If Douglas County expands its vaccination clinic hours in the future, volunteers may work shifts instead of coming in for a whole clinic.

The link to sign up to volunteer can be found on United Way of Douglas County’s volunteer website: volunteerdouglascounty.org. Rodrigue said that depending on when someone signs up, it could take about a week to receive a notification asking about availability to volunteer at future clinics. Additionally, if people cannot make a certain clinic, they will still receive notifications about volunteer opportunities at future clinics.

About 150 volunteers at the vaccination clinics have received COVID-19 vaccines, according to George Diepenbrock, spokesperson for Lawrence-Douglas County Public Health. The director of the health department, Dan Partridge, said volunteers were able to be vaccinated as part of Phase 2 because the county was considering them critical workers. Partridge said volunteers received vaccine doses only in instances when there were leftover vaccines at the end of clinics because of no-shows.

“We have made different callouts to groups to try to fill some of those doses, and all of them have had their own challenges,” he said in an email to the Journal-World. “What I would want is for everyone to show up and take their vaccine and we have none left over and hit it exactly right every time, but that is impossible. It is just a reality.”

When asked how he would respond to concerns that this policy enables healthy and able-bodied residents to sign up to volunteer and potentially receive a vaccine prior to members of the community who cannot volunteer at clinics, Partridge called it “one of the imperfections” of the system.

“We do our best to manage access to the vaccine based on those eligible under Phase 2, and when we have extra doses likely due to no shows for appointments we do our best to get those doses to someone eligible in Phase 2,” Partridge wrote. “But the priority is also not to waste the doses, and sometimes the option is a volunteer who has worked for several hours and contributed to this extensive community effort to vaccinate as many people as quickly as we can.”