In a city of movie stars, it made sense that at some point L.A. Mayor Eric Garcetti would invite one to his daily public COVID-19 briefings.
But Sean Penn’s appearance Thursday evening at the Crenshaw Christian Center testing site wasn’t about star power.
Penn’s disaster relief foundation, Community Organized Relief Effort (CORE), has been helping to spread testing across the region in an effort to contain the pandemic.
The effort has boosted L.A. city and county efforts to build the region’s testing capacity.
Right now, more than two dozen drive-in sites, with two walk-up sites, have popped up throughout L.A. County.
And while testing is limited to those who have symptoms, and to a limited number of tests per day, Garcetti and county public health officials have been keen to see testing capacity grow to about 10,000 tests per day.
Penn’s organization has been working with L.A. leaders and its fire department to bolster current efforts to build that capacity.
For instance, Penn’s organization has trained with the fire department, allowing volunteers to back up fire department personnel on the frontline of administering the swab tests for the virus.
That partnership resulted in 70 CORE volunteers at four testing sites — which backed up firefighters who had initially staffed the sites.
“That allows us to pull back our firefighters and paramedics and put them into other critical missions,” said L.A. City Fire Chief Chief Ralph Terrazas.
Penn, who was joined Thursday at Crenshaw Christian Center by Terrazas and Dr. Cynthia Davis of Charles Drew University, has said his organization has also been working with Gov. Gavin Newsom on the effort to ramp up testing across the state. Newsom’s goal, he reiterated on Thursday, is to get to more than 25,000 virus tests across California.
Penn has also noted that the process of organizing the testing has been relatively slow and deliberative to ensure the integrity of the tests. But he hoped that CORE’s experience working with local governments could be replicated by other local governments.
“It’s what I hope will be a model in terms of government and NGO partnerships that can be replicated not only in Los Angels and California, but throughout the country,” Penn said.
Garcetti’s briefing came on the darkest of days so far in terms of fatalities in L.A. County.
Officials reported 55 new deaths on Thursday — the worst toll since the crisis began. That stood alongside a toll of 10,854 total confirmed cases, L.A. County public health officials said.
