April 18, 2024
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McHenry County’s volunteer Medical Reserve Corps receives Operational Readiness Award

By Northwest Herald staff report
In this Shaw Media file photo, people line up on Tuesday, March 2, 2021, to check in for their appointments at a McHenry County Department of Health COVID-19 vaccination clinic at the site of a former Kmart, 1900 N. Richmond Road, McHenry.

In this Shaw Media file photo, people line up on Tuesday, March 2, 2021, to check in for their appointments at a McHenry County Department of Health COVID-19 vaccination clinic at the site of a former Kmart, 1900 N. Richmond Road, McHenry. (Matthew Apgar)

The McHenry County Department of Health will receive $5,000 to help build the operational readiness of its volunteer Medical Reserve Corps to meet the county’s emergency preparedness and response needs.

The Operational Readiness Award was awarded by the National Association of County and City Health Official, which represents the country’s almost 3,000 local governmental health departments, including the McHenry County health department.

The Medical Reserve Corps is a national network of volunteers, organized locally to improve the health and safety of their communities, according to the release.

In the past two years, McHenry County Medical Reserve Corps members assisted in the COVID-19 response in a number of roles – staffing the call center and vaccination clinics, contact tracing, distributing personal protective equipment – contributing more than 10,000 hours and saving the county more than $350,000.

Volunteers come from a variety of backgrounds, medical and non-medical.

Anyone interested in volunteering through the Medical Reserve Corps network is encouraged to complete an application online at bit.ly/McHenryCountyMedReserve.