Holiday gatherings. The omicron variant. Boosters for teens and adults.

There suddenly are plenty of reasons to get a shot of coronavirus vaccine. And Minnesotans are responding with a surge in demand second only to those first waves of vaccine availability early this year, according to health officials and pharmacists — not to mention vaccine hunters, who recently have found their savvy back in vogue as appointment slots fill up.

Through it all, a humble North Minneapolis clinic has been offering Pfizer and Moderna shots — firsts, seconds and boosters, for kids and adults — at a swift pace. Six days most weeks, from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. No appointment or health insurance needed. And at no cost, of course.

The clinic, at 2149 44th Ave. N. in the Camden neighborhood, is operated by Community Care Clinics of Minnesota, a small-staffed operation that has relied on state and federal funding, as well as an army of volunteer doctors and others, to dole out shots at a pace that bests many larger hospital and pharmacy networks.

Following a summer where daily vaccinations fell to a sleepy pace as low as 50 shots per day, Community Care’s vaccinations have been humming lately, with several recent days topping out at over 600 shots. And word has gotten out.

On Tuesday, the modest storefront lobby was thickly settled with masked folks, who were handed a clipboard upon entry and appeared to steadily filter in a line down a hallway, where inside several rooms they rolled up their arms and got their shot — occasionally over protestations of a needle-shy youngster — before retreating to lobby seats to wait out any allergic reactions.

“What is happening is that many places people look for appointments is booked until February, but then they hear about us,” operations director Abena Larbi-Odam said. “We might be the only place in the Twin Cities where you can just walk in, fill out some forms and get vaccinated. Our process is fast.”

The spike in demand for vaccines has created stress for some. The usual paths for many — asking their preferred doctor or search engine — aren’t necessarily the most fruitful, said Maura Caldwell, a Twin Cities vaccine hunter who earlier this year started a Facebook group and a website to help folks navigate the process.

That initial vaccination rush, which led to late-night refresh-and-repeat sessions for throngs seeking what then was a limited supply, subsided over the summer. But Caldwell said the recent spike in demand has been obvious.

“We have people asking every hour,” she said, referring to the Facebook group “Minneapolis Vaccine Hunters (helping all of MN).” Most of their queries are easily answered, often by referring people to her website, MNVaccineHunters.com.

“The vaccines are out there, but people don’t know how to find them,” Caldwell said. “Because if you try to get an appointment at the local Walgreens quickly, you probably won’t find one. If you have a particular link for CVS (www.cvs.com/minuteclinic), you will find them — but not if you just go to CVS.com. There are tricks to this. But yes, you can get it before Christmas.

“There’s even a walk-in place, where you could walk in right now and get your shot and be done within 20 minutes.”

That place is Community Care on 44th.

Community Care operates two clinics in Minneapolis and another in St. Cloud, although the 44th Avenue location is the only one currently accepting walk-ins. Since before the pandemic, the clinics have focused on providing health care to traditionally underserved populations, including Blacks, Hispanics and immigrants from Africa. But they welcome everyone, said Larbi-Odam, who was born in Ghana.

“Our model is open access,” she said. “Everyone who walks in the door can get a shot.”

Community Care also operates up to four teams that set up pop-up vaccination sites wherever they’re needed. From a “first-dose” clinic for students at St. Paul’s Expo Elementary in November to a teacher-focused clinic Friday in Edina targeting boosters for teachers, the organization has been on a vaccine barnstorming tour of sorts for the past six weeks. That Edina event, by the way, saw some 900 vaccines administered when the teachers were joined by parents who showed up with their kids.

All told, the organization, which has only a handful of staff, has put over 75,000 shots in arms since the pandemic began — and over 22,000 this fall in children ages 5 to 11.

“We’ve gotten very good at vaccines,” said Dr. Robert Odam, the organization’s founder, who is also married to Larbi-Odam.

Literally a mom-and-pop operation (the Odams have two children), Community Care Clinics is the nonprofit arm of Odam Medical Group in Minneapolis.

Dr. Odam said the organization’s efficiency with vaccinations began before the pandemic. He said he was involved in pandemic preparedness in the 2000s when influenza strains threatened to cause troubling pandemics, and again in 2017 when Minnesota experienced a measles outbreak that sprang from unvaccinated East African immigrants. He joined the state-administered Vaccines for Children Program.

Odam explained that much of the data-entry work — updating a database to communicate with the state’s vaccine registry — is done not while the patient is waiting, but afterward, by a crew of data entry workers often working into the night to process the day’s vaccinations.

Odam emphasized the work wouldn’t get done without volunteers — especially rotating crews of local physicians from HealthCare Strong, a group of Twin Cities health care professionals who mobilized to fight the pandemic.

“The honest truth is that these volunteer physicians — some are veterinarians, some are surgeons, some are retired — I think the cost is incalculable, the number of hours they bring that allow us to do this,” he said. “We get funding from MDH (the Minnesota Department of Health), but the real funding is the volunteer physicians.”

In the state’s overall strategy to battle COVID-19, Community Care is one of nine “community health clinics” chosen to best serve highly vulnerable communities, including immigrants — with or without documentation — as well as low-income neighborhoods and communities of color. The pandemic has laid bare that health and health care disparities that existed before the pandemic have made those same groups especially vulnerable to the coronavirus, with higher rates of infection and age-adjusted death.

Amy Marsicano, an MDH contract manager tasked with overseeing vaccination and testing for vulnerable communities, said the value of such clinics, including Odam’s, is more than just having a medical degree.Related Articles High court to hold special session on vaccine requirements Biden tries COVID cajoling, avoids new decrees that divide EXPLAINER: What to do if you test positive for COVID-19 St. Paul City Council to resume in-person meetings Pfizer pill becomes 1st US-authorized home COVID treatment

“The role that they’re playing is that they’re able to meet families where they live, where they work and in the neighborhoods where they feel most comfortable to receive a vaccination,” Marsicano said.

As for the Odams’ operation specifically, she said: “They’re so good at what they do.”

And in case you were wondering why an organization focused on equity is running clinics in ZIP codes like Edina as well as North Minneapolis, it’s because a network of school administrators has been requesting their services of late — all over the place.

“I think there’s a lesson there,” Marsicano said. “They’re agile and the clinical and implementation skills they bring from working in the hardest-hit communities, those skills are an advantage in all communities.”

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