Instead of going on hikes or visiting with family and friends, Dr. Vershalee Shukla spends her weekends administering free COVID-19 tests to underserved Phoenix communities with mobile testing vans.
Shukla and her team at Vincere Cancer Center partnered with the Emergency Management and Homeland Security departments of Phoenix with the goal to bring COVID-19 testing to those who did not have previous access to it.
Shukla said city council, specifically Mayor Kate Gallego, wanted to use a testing method modeled in New York that allowed healthcare workers to test hundreds of people with mobile vehicles.
At the public launch of the partnership in August, Gallego said it was important to step up and get involved in this “important service.”
“One of the things we learned from New York is that mobile testing is incredibly important and brings testing where it needs to go,” Gallego said. “It was a national best practice and one that we heard a lot of demand for here in Phoenix.”
Prior to the pandemic, Shukla ran a cancer screening program for local firefighters, but it was temporarily cancelled due to the outbreak in March. Since many of the firefighters were at a greater risk of contracting the virus, she decided to switch gears.
“I realized that if public safety, our firefighters and police, did not have access to rapid results, it’s so hard for them to be able to do their job,” Shukla said. “And then if you look at some of the low income areas, they have no access at all.”
Now Shukla said many of the firefighters use their time off from the station to volunteer at the vans, helping to make the testing process run smoothly.
The vans offer people two different types of tests: a self-nasal swab, which tests if an individual currently has the virus, and a finger prick, which tests to see if an individual has previously had the virus.
The teams have administered between 3,000 and 4,000 tests to various communities in the city so far, and they are only two months into their 100-day testing commitment.
Shukla said that the mobile vans had a bit of a slow start due to a lack of resources, but after they received the proper technology, it was a “game changer.”
The vans are strategically located in high-traffic parking lots and grocery stores so that people who don’t have cars are able to simply walk up and ask for the test.
In order to receive a COVID test, a person walks up to the van and registers—no insurance required—and one of the health officials explains the test. The person then goes to each station where they will be administered the tests and waits in a designated area for their results.
The finger prick test results come back on-site in 15 minutes or less, and the nasal swab test results come back within 3-10 days.
Even though the number of U.S. COVID-19 deaths reached over 200,000 recently, according to the John Hopkins University Coronavirus Research Center, Shukla noted that tests from the van come back positive less than 5% of the time.
Tamra Ingersoll, the Public Information Officer for the Homeland Security and Emergency Management offices in Phoenix, said that the response from community members has been overwhelmingly positive.
“The community is very receptive and very grateful for this,” Ingersoll said. “They are using it and are definitely trying to help safe-guard our communities and homes and our schools and our businesses by staying proactive and getting tested.”
The mobile van testing program is funded by the money from the Federal Cares Act, which also funds the drive-thru COVID-19 testing, the original response method used at the beginning of the pandemic.
The mobile testing vans were added to the city’s response plan because the healthcare teams did not see the turnout they had hoped for with the drive-thru sites. Ingersoll said the teams figured that it was due to a lack of transportation and access to information.
But even now, the vans are not being used to their fullest capacity.
“We see that with the van, we are not filling all the slots,” Ingersoll said. “We are getting close, but we have the potential to do a lot more.”
Contact the reporter at mphammel@asu.edu
"The Flexible Journalist" -
Hammel is a fourth-year student studying broadcast journalism at Arizona State University's Walter Cronkite college in an accelerated bachelor's-master's program. She is currently the Executive Editor for The Downtown Devil - a publication that covers hyperlocal news in the downtown Phoenix area - and is always looking for ways to improve her reporting and news writing skills—behind the camera and in front of it.
Hammel is also a certified yoga instructor at the Sun Devil Fitness Complex; she is flexible physically as well as in a way that allows her to be able to cover any news story that will educate the public, encourage civil discourse and impact communities.
