USF's top doctor offers inside look at COVID-19 testing site manned by volunteers

TAMPA, Fla. - Dr. Charles Lockwood, senior vice president of USF Health, has performed hundreds of COVID-19 tests at Hillsborough County sites -- all on his own time.

“We have volunteered now for the county for two months,” Dr. Lockwood said.

Since the coronavirus pandemic transformed the Lee Davis Community Resource Center into a coronavirus testing site, the parking lot setup has been the reality for small teams of medical professionals for months.

“A lot of them are students in our college of nursing,” Lockwood explained. “They’re experienced nurses, they’re RNs. That’s the majority. We also have athletic trainers, pharmacists, medical students, doctors.”

They work for hours in the hot Florida sun and the gear doesn’t make it any cooler.

“We’re covered, as you can see. We have a face covering, an N-95 mask, we have this face shield, and pretty much all exposed surfaces are covered,” he said. “We’ve done a great job of avoiding infections, but the price we pay is, it’s about 110 degrees.”

Besides the PPE, there are a few other things these medical professionals are doing to keep themselves safe. For one, they’re using hand sanitizer on their gloves after each test. They’re also asking those who pull up for a test to turn off their air conditioning.

“You turn off the air conditioner so that if they sneeze or they cough, which you’ll see some of them do if you’re sampling them, you won’t have that virus in a projectile fashion thrown out,” he said. “It’s a respiratory virus, it’s spread by droplets, and so the worst thing in the world is a sneeze or a cough.”

Wednesday, the nurses said, was a slow day, but what’s troubling is the turnaround time. What was once two or three days is now up to ten.

“By the time they get their results, they’re either better or in the hospital.”

Lockwood said one way to fix that is by putting more resources inside the labs.

“We’ve got to do better with that, for sure,” he added.