Will County Executive Jennifer Bertino-Tarrant is seeking to secure millions of dollars in federal funds to help the county health department with its COVID-19 vaccine distribution plan.

Bertino-Tarrant, D-Shorewood, made the request for around $5 million to a Will County Board committee in charge of doling out around $120 million the county received via the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security, or CARES, Act last year.

The County Board committee discussed the request at a meeting Thursday. Members have allocated much of the $120 million to give to local small businesses, governments, and nonprofit organizations hit hard by the COVID-19 pandemic.

Bertino-Tarrant said the money is needed to help the Will County Health Department with the “huge undertaking” of getting residents vaccinated. The county has about 690,000 residents and while not everyone may get a shot, the logistical challenges are enormous for a large population.

Specifically, Bertino-Tarrant said, the health department needs money to set up a call center to alert residents when it’s their time to get vaccinated. Residents have been able to register themselves to get notified by the health department when they can get their shot.

The county executive said setting up that operation is “probably the biggest priority right now.”

“I think (residents are) expecting an immediate call back,” she said. “But we’re talking about thousands of calls a day.”

A few County Board members asked if the health department had already received money directly from the federal government for the effort.

Mitch Schaben, Bertino-Tarrant’s chief of staff, told members the department only received about $1.7 million. To put that in context, he said, the department received a little over $1 million to vaccinate only around 18,000 people about a decade ago for the H1N1 virus.

“They don’t have near the resources they need right now to even scale this thing up to where it needs to be,” Schaben said.

Steve Brandy, a spokesman for the Will County Health Department, echoed Schaben’s point about the “much more complicated” process of distributing COVID-19 vaccines. He said the department needs the money to spend on more workers to help get vaccine distribution off the ground.

“We’re swamped,” Brandy said

County Board members will have more opportunities to discuss spending the CARES Act money on other expenses this month. Members have also talked about using the funds for a new morgue, air quality improvements, veterans programs and more.