Unknown: You know, it's such an awesome responsibility. We are the first line of defense here. I'd like to say this is the man cave that I've always dreamed of but not exactly the right situation for that. Today we delivered an RV to Lynn and her family for her to use until this is over, I guess. We are getting in touch with residents who have tested positive for COVID. Been a little over four weeks. It was four weeks Wednesday. Four weeks of essentially living in a tent. This is really a huge matter for him considering he's a surgeon and he's in the hospital every day he's walking in and out of the hospital and he has a daughter with asthma and also his mother in law, whose elderly, lives in their house. So he thought it was At first I just said, 'Hey, why don't I just get the tent and best, you know, since their high risk to self isolate from his family. Just thinking ahead and thinking how I can minimize my risk of spreading whatever I might bring home from the hospital, to them or to any of the other members of our family. A doctor is living in a tent to self quarantine from his family. And you know, all my imaginations running left and right, and I'm not sure what to think. I'm thinking maybe he's living in like a carnival tent in his yard or something. It's actually just a smaller tent inside their screened in porch areas. It's inside the house, but it's one part of the house that's kind of isolated away from the rest of it. When he said, I'll go to the hotel, we have four children, and my mom lives with us temporarily as well. And I thought, 'Oh goodness, you know, what abou help with homework or question that we have? Or even, 'Hey, can you watch the dog while the dog's outside?' I thought, I don' whole thing for him, the kids miss him. And he's still in the then the blow up mattress that my son and I would use for camp out with with the scouts?' But who would want to sleep on an house. But they do miss him because they they get to see air mattress for possibly months? Which is why Emily got involved. Emily owns Upcountry Camp, a glamorous camping company that typically specializes in parties. She gave them a bed, I'm pretty sure so he didn't have to sleep on an air mattress for months because that was her biggest thing was like I don't want to make him sleep on an air mattress for a him, but they don't really get to be with and they don't get to few months. nobody really wants to do that. Sonia reached out to me, explained their situation. And I was so relieved to hear from her and to know that we could finally do something to help, because we've all kind of been sitting at home wondering like, 'What is it that I could do?' And then she just made it look really nice, kind of like a little bedroom feel. And I hadn't really been that bad and very comfortable. I'll say this. We have four children. So it's been very quiet. I know he he gets to see his family but he doesn't really get to be with them. So I know that's the toughest part of this eat dinner with him. They don't get to hang out with them. You know, they don't even get to hug him or anything. I think the children miss him. He's very involved with our kids. So that's hard. But the good thing is he's just right outside. That's what I think is the craziest part is he's out there 100% of the time in this screen d in porch. And the toughest art is there was severe weather ere for a couple of weeks. I'm pretty sure it made national news a couple times. He was really dedicated to the self isolation because of his mother n law, because of his daughter with asthma. I mean, he really understands the severity of people with high risk. He doesn't want to give that to his family. And so that's kind of the precautions that he's taking, and that's how serious he takes it. Scroll through the RVs for MDS Facebook page, and you'll see words of gratitude for people who are loaning their RVs to health care workers free of charge. It's just a group of volunteers that have been trying to connect people who have RV's and campers who are willing to let people use them with the first responders and the healthcare workers on the frontlines who need those things. No one's being paid to run this group. It's just a grassroots effort. When you read the stories and you hear that they're, you know, sleeping in their garage, sleeping on a porch, sleeping in a tent, you know, they're trying to not come home and give this to their families. I think that's what gets you. You know, they, they need a place to unwind. They need a place of comfort that they can rest and because they're going right back at it, the next day. Russ Haselwood, I saw was from the Cincinnati area. I reached out to him because I saw that he'd posted saying that he had an RV that he and his wife use that they were willing to lend to a first responder or healthcare worker. And he did the story with us, just talked about why he was wanting to help. They weren't using it. It's just something they take on vacation so they didn't need to go in and do like a super deep clean. They hadn't been in it in a long time. A couple of days later, he reached out to me and he said, 'Hey, we're about to go deliver this camper to the family.' I was like, 'Oh, that's great. What time are you planning to do this today?' And he goes, 'We're on the way.' It was like, 'Well send me the address.' Lynn is a nurse at Christ Hospital, and Kristen is a nurse at Mercy Fairfield, and the two of them are both using this camper. So it was Lynn, her husband, her son, and his girlfriend, Kristen, who were all living in their home. Unbelievable. I just can't believe these people did this for me. I've got everything. I've got a refrigerator, I've got a stove, I've got an oven. I feel like I can lay my head down now and not worry about my husband who is currently undergoing a cancer treatment. And my son who has asthma really bad. They're both in high risk groups. The last thing he needs to be diagnosed with COVID, so she was s emotional when we were talkin to her to her because she wa just like, 'For weeks, we've be n trying if I'm infected, you know, stay away from my husband. I have no idea if I am. So we've been going through so much, so many Clorox wipes and trying to stay safe and not coming anywhere near each other, trying to stay on opposite sides of the house.' Know that I'm not bringing this home to them. We're helping and making a difference, you know, and easing their stress, right? That was just such a relief for her to have somewhere where they could sleep at night, separate from her husband and son, and still be able to go outside and talk to each other from a distance. So you could tell how relieved she was and how much of a blessing it was. They are angels, they are truly angels. What work my staff do is so critical to beating this pandemic. When I started talking with people from the health care environment, something that kept coming up was the fact that they were very grateful to these environmental services workers. They said we couldn't do our jobs without the work of environmental services workers. I spoke with Andrea Brown and she is the environmental services trainer for Sutter Health here in Sacramento. And what she does is she's in charge of training people who end up making sure the hospital environment, the healthcare environment is completely free of germs and pathogens. Basically, they're the ones who make it safe for doctors, nurses, other people in the healthcare environment to do their jobs safely without coming in contact with germs that could make people sick. Not only are they making sure the unit that helps the people who are infected with COVID-19, they're also making sure the entire hospital setting, the entire healthcare setting is clean and safe for people who aren't diagnosed with COVID-19 to come in and be seen by their healthcare providers safely. If we didn't have our team of environmental services workers then nursing and doctors would be unsuccessful, you know? They wouldn't be able to ward off pathogens that are still left behind in the environment. In normal times, they're sanitizing surfaces and making sure things are free of germs anyway. Right now they have to be particularly careful and particularly meticulous in the intensive care unit, because obviously, we don't even know the full scope of just how contagious COVID-19 is. But she did have one of the workers in the background there to kind of show all that they were doing and they're getting every surface. They get the floors, floor to ceiling, they get the railings, they get the beds, they get even in rooms that aren't treating COVID patients, they have the TVs. Every little surface that would have some space to clean, they clean it. One of the tools in their fight is a special germ zapping robot originally deployed a few years ago at Sutter Sacramento. Workers say it can our co-workers are safe and that they're not bringing anything eliminate the coronavirus from surfaces around the hospital. The Xenix light strike germ-zapping robot. It's a big name for a very important piece of equipment. Even though they're using this germ zapping robot, it does not replace the work of the human beings on her staff who are so meticulous about making sure every surface is clean and free of germs that would cause harm to people who are being treated or the healthcare staff. The patients are our number one priority but who behind that is the lives of our co-workers and the doctors and nurses who work here and and we want to make sure that home to their families. Just the day before I did my story, the governor of California, Gavin Newsom, went to another office where essential cleaning services workers are working to keep state facilities clean. Just want you to know your work matters and you're quite literally saving lives. So thank you. He highlighted their work and said they are her doing the work that has to be done to keep people safe. And he said he had tremendous respect for them and, and he shined a light on them as well. And that was very special for Andrea to hear that the governor actually recognized their work as well in a public setting. I think it's really special to be able to tell the stories of people who otherwise don't get that sort of attention, and the Environmental Services Department at these health care settings. They really deserve this recognition for keeping people safe. McGlav , who recently graduated fr m Harvard's public health school, is one of about 800 pub ic health students who volunteered to become Massachusetts' fi st wave of disease investigators known as contact trace s. Claire McGlave was one of several hundred st college students here in Massachusetts, who was studying public health, and she was invited and agreed to be one of the first contact tracers here in Massachusetts. Massachusetts was the very first state to launch a contact tracing program. And to get it off the ground right away before they could recruit paid contact tracers. They reached out to college students who were studying public health or other applicable fields. She felt that that's why the public health students were a good resource to turn to for this first effort at contact tracing, because they not only know the science, they also are specialized in dealing with people and dealing with these kinds of delicate situations. I think that the volunteer corps is an example of how you can quickly mobilize an agile force of students who are ready to serve. She found that she was doing a lot of hand-holding, that people, when they got this news, wanted to know more about it. They needed to know what resources were available. They really just wanted to talk about it because in many cases, it was a complete shock to them. I think on average, they were spending 45 minutes on the phone with each person they were reaching out to. They're not only calling up and saying, 'Okay, you've tested positive, who are all the people you came in contact with?' They're saying, 'Okay, here's what your life is going to be like. If you live with your family, you are immediately going to go into your bedroom, you're not going to come out of your bedroom, they're going to bring the meals to you in your bedroom, you're going to have to use a separate bathroom from the rest of your family members. You can't go to the grocery store anymore. You can't do any of the things that you have been doing even in isolation, you know, limited movements, all that is over. You have to shut yourself off from the rest of the world for at least the next couple of weeks until you no longer test positive.' Can people remember everybody they have been in contact with? We're lucky now because people have been abiding by the physical distancing measures. And so that makes our efforts a lot easier and more streamlined because they'll say, 'I've been at home and I haven't been seeing anyone.' What really struck me most is the fact that these were not just technical calls with a checklist and instructions about what to do, but really emotionally involved calls where they were providing not only medical knowledge, but emotional support to these people who are going through a very difficult time in their lives. I have been enjoying it because the alternative is just sitting at home and worrying about what's going on. So now, last month, Massachusetts started transitioning to professional contact tracers, and I sensed at the end that they felt it was a unique experience that is only going to happen once in their lives and they were perhaps a little regretting that it was coming to an end.