MARIN, Calif. (KRON) - Marin County employees are stepping up in the fight against COVID-19.
Personnel from several departments, like Marin County Parks and Marin County Fire, are now being reassigned to vaccination sites to speed up the vaccine process.
At the Marin County Civic Center, this is one of the two main vaccination sites that county employees just started helping out at.
They're doing everything from administering the vaccination, to managing the flow of people at these sites.
Marin County employees are being reassigned to speed up and tackle vaccination efforts throughout the county.
“In Marin County parks our rangers who are typically out patrolling Open Space Preserves or greeting visitors at our parks instead are now being assigned to help people register and navigate the vaccination sites. It's important to work so it feels good to help,” Max Korten said.
Max Korten, director of Marin County Parks, says they're dedicating about 30 staff members each day to work at vaccination sites like the Marin County Civic Center.
“Close to half our staff are supporting vaccination sites now, starting last week,” Korten said.
In addition to Marin County Parks personnel, you'll also find staff members from Marin County Fire helping out.
“Kinda described as an all hands on deck sort of situation. In order to meet the vaccine demand that we need to in the time frame, we want to be doing 40 plus thousand vaccines a week and that's going to take a lot of people,” Fire Chief Jason Weber said.
In addition to logistics support, EMT’s and paramedics are taking on a new role to administer the vaccine.
“They're working at the site that's at the Marin Center. They're also taking an ambulance and going mobile to senior care facilities with Kaiser staff and other medical professionals, making sure we get this vaccine in the arms of the people that need it the most, and then we're working on opening additional points of dispensing,” Weber said.
However, taking employees from their current roles and introducing them to new ones does have an impact.
“The biggest effect is our firefighters have been at this from one of the busiest fire seasons in California history, working unprecedented hours already so we're asking them to step up again and continue those long hours, a long week but they're doing it tirelessly,” Weber said.
Now that Marin County has extra staff in place and on standby, the departments say the only thing holding them back to getting this vaccine out is the actual supply.
However, the county is expecting more doses to arrive soon and says it will be prepared to offer close to 500,000 shots over the next few months.
Via Coronavirus | KRON4 https://www.kron4.com
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