Hamden Covid Test Pop-Up Draws Crowd

Pablo deVos-Deak, who graduated from Hamden High School this month, has attended six Black Lives Matter protests in the past week.

He was also one of the firsts to get in line at a new Hamden pop-up Covid-19 testing site that launched Monday.

The pop-up is a collaboration among the Town of Hamden, Cornell Scott-Hill Health Center (CS-HHC), and Quinnipiack Valley Health District.

The specimen collection sessions, which are free and provided on a first come first serve basis, are scheduled to take place on Mondays and Thursdays through the rest of June from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. All that’s needed is a form of identification.

The pop-up is the first not-for-profit testing site Hamden has set in motion since the pandemic started. Nurses and administrative staff from Hill Health Center worked out of two tents located at the Keefe Community Center in southern Hamden. In their first four hours, the nurses tested a total of 81 people, who should be able to get their results within two to five days.

“The goal is to reach people where they are,” said Bethany Kieley, the Chief Operations Officer at CS-HHC, Connecticut’s first Federally Qualified Community Health Center.

“I live about ten minutes away from here; I just decided to swing by this morning,” deVos-Deak said.

DeVos-Deak stopped by to get checked out specifically because of his participation in marches around the state over the past several days. Although he has seen strong implementation of social distancing guidelines during the protests, he expressed anxiety about the spread of the virus.

“Many of my friends can’t find jobs or have lost work,” he said. DeVos-Deak plans to work with the Census Bureau this summer and has also been spending time volunteering with IRIS in New Haven (Integrated Refugee and Immigrant Services) and completing the online orientation for Southern Connecticut State University.

Although he’s been keeping busy, he added that ​“it’s really hard to be finishing senior year and to know that all of my friends are going in different directions.”

“And both of my parents are high risk,” he noted.

Patricia Vener-Saavedra, a 67-year-old artist and Hamden resident, was also in line for a test.

Though Vener-Saavedra has an in-house studio where she can self-isolate and focus on her artwork, she has still been going out and getting involved.

“I went to one protest on the Green,” she said. ​“I stayed in the back and didn’t go onto the highway or anything.”

Vener-Saavedra also serves on the board for the nonprofit organization Partnerships Adult Day Center, located near the pop-up site. ​“All of our clients and staff need to be tested before going back to work,” she said, grateful that the opportunity to do so existed at a nearby location.

While Vener-Saavedra noted how lucky she’s been to be able to social distance, she also shared how difficult the pandemic has been on her. ​“It’s not like I’m starving,” she said, but she is on food stamps, reports herself as ​“high risk,” and suffers from bad allergies.

“I’m from a Jewish family with lots of hugging and kissing,” she also said. ​“So I really miss that physical contact.”

In the meantime, she has been engaging more deeply with those from her temple, making phone calls to check in with the community. Although she has been selling her own mask designs on Zazzle (you can check them out here), she noted that the one she wore today was made by Chevra Hands, a quilt-making group from Congregation Mishkan Israel.

Pat Cabral, who has been volunteering at the community center for six years and was also waiting to get tested, said that the Mishkan Israel and other volunteers have been donating masks to the center through the pandemic.

When one man walked by the site without a mask, Sharon Jones, the program manager at the community center, told him to put one on. When he replied that he didn’t have one, Jones sent him to the front of the center to grab one of the donated ones.

“I’m the mother. I yell at everyone,” she joked.

Jones also explained some of the logic behind the selected hours and location for the testing sessions.

“Food distribution takes place from noon to 2 p.m. on Mondays and Thursdays,” she recited.

Hamden residents coming by to pick up groceries also had the option to get access to a test, without a doctor’s note or other prerequisites that have acted as barriers to many seeking tests over the past few months.

The center is also the only non-school site to offer free lunches to those 18 and under from 9 a.m. to 12 p.m. during weekdays.

Gary Merwede, the Chief of the Hamden Fire Department, pointed out that they also decided to situate the pop-up right in the heart of Hamden’s second district, which is the most densely populated area in the town and hosts the most multifamily housing.

Sharon Jones chimed in: ​“It’s not only the most densely populated, but is home to the most black and brown people.”

“We’re here to take care of our neighborhood,” she stated. ​“It’s also great to work for a town that shows such concern for its residents.”

The community center, which receives town funding as well as grant money from the Federal Emergency Management Agency, has been working extra hard over the past few months to advocate for and support those who are disproportionately affected by the pandemic.

“We’re concentrating on basic needs,” Jones said, primarily meaning food security.

Adam Sendroff, Hamden’s Community Development Manager and Fair Rent Officer, saod the center and the town are also focused on ​“a looming housing crisis,” given that Hamden’s eviction moratorium lifts in July (though New Haven canceled July rent for public-housing tenants).

Mayor Curt Leng stopped by to see how the pop-up was doing. ​“We expected maybe 20 people total to come,” he said, ​“but there were 20 people here waiting before testing even started this morning.”

He said that Hamden had tried to offer accessible testing earlier in the pandemic, but limited materials and testing made doing so complicated.

Bethany Kieley of Cornell Scott-Hill also said that lack of adequate PPE for patients and staff placed limits on the amount of testing that their Health Center could offer. Once they got access to more PPE, both through purchases and donations, lack of swabs and test kits posed a challenge.

“We met with the other organizations about 10 days ago,” Kieley remembered. Even as the town proceeds with what Mayor Leng described as a relatively ​“conservative approach to reopening,” Kieley and those involved in the collaboration identified an ​“unmet need” for testing in the area.

“It is much more challenging to reopen than to close down,” Leng said. Leng’s hope is that the data from the new testing site, as well as the input from all those collaborating on the project, can be used to figure out how to ​“make testing meaningful.”

According to Leng, this includes focusing on communication and figuring out the most effective ways to tell the public about the site. It also means considering the most accessible locations for the testing tents. Leng proposed rotating the pop-up and setting up at a school or at the Davenport-Dunbar residences, an affordable housing community on Putnam Avenue.

“First the leaders need to be tested,” Sharon Jones said. ​“Otherwise everyone else wonders why they should have to do it.”

Jones and Sendroff planned to get tested that day. Sendroff had pointed out that he had been to three protests recently with his daughters, one of whom is, like Pablo deVos-Deak, graduating from Hamden High School this year.

Jones added that she herself is planning to graduate from SCSU next year with a doctorate in social work. ​“The pandemic better be over by then,” she said. ​“Because I love a good party.”