National Guard set to aid McHenry County in COVID-19 vaccination effort

The Illinois National Guard is set to be deployed to McHenry County to run its own mass vaccination site with additional doses provided by the state beyond the county’s normal vaccine allocation, County Board Chairman Mike Buehler said Thursday.

The McHenry County Department of Health visited a potential site for this new vaccine clinic with members of the National Guard on Thursday, Public Health Administrator Melissa Adamson said in a meeting of County Board members ahead of the visit.

“We appreciate and welcome the governor’s and [the Illinois Department of Public Health’s] assistance in getting McHenry County more vaccine to our population that wants it and look forward to working with the National Guard,” Buehler said in an interview Thursday afternoon.

The health department and members of the state’s Emergency Management Agency toured multiple sites Wednesday and Thursday to identify the ideal location for the county’s next mass vaccination clinic, Buehler said. The new site would join two others run by the county – the old Kmart building in McHenry and Harvard Moose Family Center in Harvard.

Potential site locations include the McHenry County Fairgrounds in Woodstock, an old T.J. Maxx building in Crystal Lake and the vacant Joseph’s Marketplace in Crystal Lake, among others, Buehler said.

The county is hopeful that members of the Illinois National Guard will be deployed to the county in as soon as two to three weeks, he said. They will stay for a period of six to eight weeks to aid in the vaccination of county residents, with a focus on local seniors.

Kane and Lake counties have also been in talks with the Illinois National Guard to set up similar mass vaccination clinics, Buehler said.

Once contracts are finalized by Kane County officials, a COVID-19 mass vaccination site is expected to open within a month at a former retail building in Batavia, the Daily Herald reported.

The National Guard will be bringing their own doses of COVID-19 vaccine with them straight from the state’s supply, opening up another avenue for more vaccine to flow into the county, he said.

The McHenry County Department of Health will contribute doses to the National Guard’s local vaccination effort “as needed,” Buehler said, but he said contributions from the county’s stockpile will be relatively minimal.

The National Guard will require a representative of the health department to serve in a supervisory role over the clinic, but otherwise will provide all of the necessary staffing, Buehler said.

As the number of vaccine clinics increases, county government employees are being encouraged to volunteer at clinics to reduce the burden on health department staff, who are already spread thin, he said.