ALBANY COUNTY — Two recent volunteers to the county’s Medical Reserve Corps — Angela Sears, a registered nurse who works for the Albany Academies, and Matt Miller, a teacher at Ravena-Coeymans-Selkirk who is also a county legislator — spoke on Friday about the worth of their work.

With schools closed — and the governor this week extended the closures at least another two weeks — both Sears and Miller decided to volunteer for the county.

Sears said she started out returning phone calls, telling residents that their test results for COVID-19 had come back negative or weren’t yet back. The calls involved answering questions from anxious people.

This week, Sears started making intake calls for people under quarantine. She tells them how to keep social distance in the same household and instructs them on the importance of cleaning shared areas like kitchens and bathrooms. Sears also said she “hooks them up” with resources, for instance, if they need food or medicine.

“You never know what your job’s going to be,” said Sears, adding that the work is “very rewarding.”

She concluded, “They need volunteers to keep this work up because it’s a lot.”

Miller said he went online to the county’s website to sign up for volunteer work on Friday at 2:30 p.m., thinking he might hear back on Monday. “I got a call two hours later,” he said, and worked for four hours the next day.

Making phone calls to say quarantine is required can be “a little scary for people,” Miller said. It’s different telling them they are getting out of quarantine, he added.

“The mission changes basically every day,” said Miller. He praised the department of health for smoothly managing “on the fly.”

The county’s health commissioner, Elizabeth Whalen, said her department could not have had the response it has had without the Medical Reserve Corps volunteers.

“We’re really very grateful for the work,” Whalen said.  “People have many questions, understandably … it’s not always a quick conversation … We’re as nimble as we need to be.”

Whalen concluded of the volunteers, “Without them, we couldn’t be doing what we’re doing.”

Residents who want to volunteer for the Albany County Medical Reserve Corps may call the Department of Health’s Medical Reserve Corps Coordinator at 518-447-4610