Many involved in behind the scenes working to help vaccinate residents in Amarillo

AMARILLO, Texas (KFDA) - The Amarillo walk-in vaccine clinic has been successful getting people vaccinated against the virus as quickly as possible.

From Amarillo police and fire departments to employees at the Amarillo library, many in Amarillo and around the country are helping with vaccinations.

Despite the uncertainty, some say they are loving what they do.

“I absolutely love my job, I love what I do and I lover serving our community. I think this is just a testament of what we do and how we like to do things,” said Marcus Nerios, prevention program coordinator, Amarillo Public Health.

Marcus says he has a servant’s heart.

He has a job that deals with paperwork and data entry for COVID-19 vaccinations and loves what he does.

“It’s not necessarily just the nurses and the people screening, but there’s a lot of people behind the scenes even that make this work,” said Casie Stoughton, director of Amarillo Public Health.

It’s people like Marcus who allow the Amarillo walk-in vaccine clinic to run smoothly.

“Every vaccine does have to be documented because everything is reported back to the state. That’s how we get our allocation for vaccinations,” said Nerios.

“We’ve given just over 33,000 doses of vaccine. So, that’s 33,000 pieces of paper that we are managing,” said Stoughton.

While the paperwork isn’t difficult, it can be time consuming.

“Per each person, you know it’s not a lot of paperwork for just an individual, but at the end of the day, when we compile everything and every single document we have for each person, it can be quite a bit,” said Nerios.

Without the extra help from city employees and nurses from around the country, people would have to wait much longer for a COVID-19 vaccine in Amarillo.

“Unfortunately, if we didn’t have the help that we currently did have, it would slow the process down tremendously and we would have to wait. We would have to put a lot of those individuals on hold and it would just make the wait time a lot longer and a lot more strenuous on people,” said Nerios.

It’s the extra hands that are making it possible to get a little closer to normal.

“They are unsung heroes, certainly of this vaccination clinic. We are caught up with data entry, so we want to make sure the state get’s that information so we can continue to receive vaccine in Amarillo,” said Stoughton.

According to the City of Amarillo, the next time the walk-in vaccine clinic will be open will be on Monday at 9:00 a.m.

Currently first and second doses are being distributed to those who fall into the 1A and 1B categories set by the state.

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