Photo By Joseph Siemandel | Sgt. Kevin Probst, 1041st Transportation Company, puts an instruction sheet into the...... read more read more
Subscribe
When Gov. Jay Inslee laid out his recovery plan for Washington, testing for COVID-19 was one of his pillars. Ensuring that test kits are readily available has been a team effort between professionals with the Department of Health, AmeriCorp and a dozen members of the Washington National Guard.
“Working with the Department of Health and AmeriCorp has been great, our guys know how important this mission is and are excited to be here,” said Maj. Jeff Rogers, a logistician and site leader for the Washington National Guard. “This is all logistics and supply chain management, so being a logistician working this mission is right in my wheel house.”
Rogers, who recently returned from a deployment to Afghanistan, got the call to be the site leader at the end of April and knew how important this mission would be.
“I’m super pumped to be on this mission and glad to do our part,” said Rogers. “This mission is about getting the right supplies to the right place at the right time to get the right results and hopefully give everyone peace of mind.”
Rogers’ team of 12 works side by side with a dozen AmeriCorp volunteers. The volunteers put together the sterile test kit components, then pass them to the National Guard members to put the instructions and sterile test kit bag into an outer biohazard bag. The assembled kits are then packaged by Guard members into boxes for shipping to counties.
“A lot of quality control is happening to ensure that the test kits are properly created, packaged, shipped and tracked,” said Rogers. “Making sure everything is sterile is critical. When new components come in for the test kits they undergo a sterilization test to ensure the products are safe to use and will give an accurate test reading.”
The Guardsmen that are on the mission know the importance of what they are doing, often building enough kits to run out of supplies. As of May 14, the group had assembled 28,306 kits with the ability to test 141,530 individuals.
“I never expected I would do this when I joined, but that’s what is cool about being in the Guard. You are doing things you haven’t done before to help out your state,” said Sgt. Mario Perez, a motor transportation operator with the 1041st Transportation Company. “It’s awesome to be able to help out.”
Perez, a security officer at the Port of Tacoma in his civilian capacity, has supported the COVID-19 response at multiple Community Based Test Sites prior to building the test kits.
“It was a good job working at the test sites, people would come in scared not knowing what to expect and we were able to calm them down,” said Perez.
| Date Taken: | 05.15.2020 |
| Date Posted: | 05.15.2020 10:33 |
| Story ID: | 370075 |
| Location: | TUMWATER, WASHINGTON, US |
| Web Views: | 150 |
| Downloads: | 1 |
This work, Guardsmen build COVID-19 test kits as team effort to support state, by Joseph Siemandel, identified by DVIDS, must comply with the restrictions shown on https://www.dvidshub.net/about/copyright.
No keywords found.
