Coronavirus Latest: Dr. Rob Danoff Talks About Drive-Thru COVID-19 Testing Site Procedures
PHILADELPHIA (CBS) -- As more drive-thru coronavirus testing sites pop up across the Philadelphia region, people are wondering what goes on inside them. Dr. Rob Danoff, who is in the frontlines in the battle against COVID-19 and oversees a testing center for Jefferson Hospital in Bucks County, joined Eyewitness News to discuss testing site procedures.
Q: What goes on in theses testing physicalities?
You pull up there and you have a person on the phone talking you through the process -- this way it is not face-to-face. We put an information packet between your windshield wiper and windshield. Here's information on COVID signs and symptoms to look for and we also give them a surgical mask. And then they get out of their car, they go inside and put on the surgical mask. Then they drive into the tent and we talk to them on the phone again, tell them what we are going to do. They roll down their window, then the ones who are doing the testing will come over there. We take their temperature, we take their heart rate, oxygen levels and their blood and then if everything is fine from there, we go and take a sample and it's usually in the nose that we do it and it stays in there for about five seconds.
Q: Once you put the cotton swab up their nose, they are going to cough, sneeze, that is why the protective gear is so important to you, correct?
It's usually important because you know what we do, they wear masks, they roll the window down a little bit below their nose. Hopefully they won't cough and sneeze, but they can. We're wearing personal protective equipment, we have a face shield on, the N-95 mask, certainly we have the gowns and double gloves because we have to also protect the health care workers doing all the testing because that's pretty vulnerable right there. So we do try to gown up as best we can.
Q: In-between each patient that you are seeing, what is the procedure?
Yeah, absolutely. We double glove so we're always protecting the inside glove. We take out the outside gloves. We always have clean gloves on, the face shield gets wiped down to make sure that's clear. All the equipment in-between each patient, everything is wiped down totally clean. So when we go to the next person, everything is clean so they don't need to worry about it.
Watch the video above for the full interview.
