Photo By Sgt. Michael Baltz | Florida National Guard Army Sgt Candice Davis, with the 870th Engineer Company,...... read more read more
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The Florida National Guard launches Northeast Florida’s COVID-19 mobile strike teams to assist those unable to travel to the community-based testing sites.
Members of the 44th Civil Support Team began supporting Bradford County by going to nursing homes and assisted living facilities to test senior citizens, who are more vulnerable to the coronavirus. Employees at these locations will also be tested.
“Mobile testing is designed for a more vulnerable population set,” said Army 1st Lt. Cody Burns, operations officer of the 44th CST. “We are going to them to in order to assist the facilities and find out the true spread of the threat, as well as providing public health officials a better picture of the community.”
As a fulltime operation, the 44th CST is acclimated to the processes of responding to biological threats. The unit deploys to support civil authorities at domestic chemical, biological, radiological, and nuclear (CBRN) incident sites to identify CBRN agents or substances.
This mobile strike team will leverage the extensive training on aseptic techniques in order to ensure proper safety measures are taken to combat the potential spread of the virus.
“Our teams are thoroughly trained in both the Florida National Guard and Center for Disease Control guidelines regarding personal protective equipment,” said Burns. “Each position on the team has 100s of hours of specialized training, as well as a suite of advanced equipment.”
Once arrived at the location, a team of four Soldiers will go from room-to-room to perform specimen collections. Each team will be comprised of a medic who will perform the swab, a scriber, a quality assurance person and a runner, who will support the team with supplies.
Each Soldier or Airman will meet or exceed the recommended guidelines for PPE by wearing a suit, mask, gloves and goggles. After testing with each patient, the servicemembers will perform a decommissioning process were they clean or replace certain PPE in order to prevent any cross contamination.
“We are constantly training getting in these suits, getting in our gear, getting clean, and making sure we don’t have any contamination,” said Air Force Staff Sgt. Gregory Kassner, a survey team member with the 44th CST. “I think we have a pretty good plan to go down range.”
Once the sample is collected, it will be stored in a cool environment and transported to a Florida Department of Health lab in Jacksonville, Florida.
Although the 44th CST makes up most of the Northeast Florida mobile response effort, they are supplemented with combat medics from various commands throughout the state, the 48th CST is based out of Pinellas Park and is augmented with members from the FLNG’s CBRNE Enhanced Response Force Package at Camp Blanding Joint Training Center.
“The level of professionalism has been outstanding,” said Burns. “The Soldiers and Airman working with this group have really embraced this mission, and they have embraced the real-world nature of it and the value it will bring to our public health partners.”
| Date Taken: | 04.15.2020 |
| Date Posted: | 04.15.2020 15:35 |
| Story ID: | 367460 |
| Location: | STARKE, FLORIDA, US |
| Web Views: | 443 |
| Downloads: | 0 |
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