Abi Nimitz performing fit testing of a colleague's gear at Henrico Health Department
Joshua David isn’t on the front lines in the battle against COVID-19, but he’s not on the sidelines, either.
The Mechanicsville native, who is set to begin medical school in July at Virginia Commonwealth University, is helping the nurses, doctors and other health care providers as a volunteer with the Virginia Medical Reserve Corps.
The auxiliary service was formed in the wake of the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, as a backup to professionals in dealing with emergencies such as natural disasters or terrorist actions, or to help with everyday concerns such as vaccination drives, biking surveys or health fairs. In April Gov. Ralph Northam issued a call for more volunteers for the corps to help with the response to the COVID-19 pandemic.
David signed up as a corps volunteer while working on his undergraduate degree in chemistry at VCU, joining with a friend. His early reserve experiences have included a vaccination drive in which 500 people were helped over a few hours.
He was in Boston working as a technical associate in biochemistry research on Parkinson’s disease at Massachusetts Institute of Technology when the pandemic hit; he returned to live with his family and also returned to the reserve corps to help out. “I wanted to be involved,” he says. “This is the perfect opportunity.”
He’s been working with a COVID-19 hotline and helping with testing drives. He’s also part of contact tracing efforts. Working with the hotline entailed fielding calls on everything from providing details on testing events to alleviating fears of people who feared they had been exposed to the coronavirus. There are also frustrated souls who just call and yell. “They just want to be heard,” he says.
The corps provides training sessions, but much of the learning comes in the doing, David says.
“Every day, I learn something new. We’re all learning something new.”
A socially distanced briefing
Statewide, corps volunteer rolls increased from 10,000 in January to 18,060 as of June 2, according to Jennifer Freeland, state volunteer coordinator for the Virginia Department of Health’s Office of Emergency Preparedness. “They are definitely out in the community doing great work,” she says. “That is the ultimate reason why our program was created, and it’s really rewarding to see that we are doing kind of what we were built to do.”
Freeland notes that corps members have also helped out and performed duties at long-term care facilities that had their staffs depleted as workers tested positive for COVID-19. Some volunteers in part of the state were commuting an hour to work at a facility, performing duties without pay.
In metro Richmond, volunteers in the city doubled to more than 1,000, with volunteer ranks tripling in Henrico to almost 1,000 since late February, according to Kate Bausman, Medical Reserve Corps and special response coordinator at the Richmond Health District. “It’s really been astounding, the outpouring of support,” she says.
About 60% of volunteers are in medical professions, including doctors and nurses. There are also a number of students and people with no prior medical experience.
The corps has been deployed during the pandemic for duties ranging from working hotlines to providing help with community testing efforts, and it has geared up to play a major role in contact tracing, with nurses making calls to contacts of people who have tested positive and other volunteers reaching out to those who have tested negative.
Medical Reserve Corps members working on contact tracing
Corps volunteers also helped in checking temperatures and administering health assessments to people before they enter Henrico government offices, and they have helped assemble and distribute kits with masks, hand sanitizer and health information, Bausman says. Corps members are also set to ensure safety at election polling sites in some areas across the state and to help staff the polls, and they have assisted in pastoral care, nursing and social work duties.
“The MRC volunteers have been a tremendous asset in the pandemic response,” says Danny Avula, director of the Richmond and Henrico County Health Districts. “They have allowed us the ability to scale up our efforts rapidly.”
Barbara Curtis is a registered nurse who has been working with the reserve corps’ Henrico and Chickahominy unit for more than a year. During the pandemic, her duties have included working an information hotline service in Hanover County, helping allay fears, providing guidance and moral support and drawing on her professional, clinical skills to provide accurate, helpful information.
She joined the reserve corps after she retired. “I’ve always wanted to do volunteer work when the time came, and I just wanted to give back to the community,” she says. “It’s really enriching to me to give that kind of advice to people.”
Medical Reserve Corps volunteers Therese Stansbury, Melissa Earley and Katie Tyson at a testing event in Gilpin Court
Katie Tyson, an OB-GYN physician and medical director for South University’s physician assistant program, signed up in March for the corps’ Henrico and Chickahominy unit, and she has been a regular in helping with testing outreach activities.
Working with the corps has been an eye-opening and humbling experience, she says. People lining up to be seen and tested are uncomfortable, fearful; some are unwell, and you see fear in their eyes. And yet, they are grateful, too. Always in the end, it’s a “thank you” or a “bless you,” she says.
Therese Stansbury and her husband, David, answered the call for volunteers as well. She’s a retired registered nurse, and he’s retired military and has been serving as an EMT with a local volunteer fire department. With the corps, she has been conducting testing while he’s been helping out with registration duties at events. Both are set to help with contact tracing, too.
They note that the corps has been involved in testing outreach at some of Richmond’s overlooked communities including Gilpin Court, Hillside Court and Creighton Court. “It kind of felt like we needed to do our part to help out,” David Stansbury says. “A lot of people don’t have the option to stay at home.”
Since the Stansburys are both retired, the corps offered a chance for them to volunteer together. “It’s absolutely the right thing to do,” says Therese Stansbury. “It’s a ground-swelling of people that want to come out and make this better for our country.”
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