National Guard arrives to Harborview Medical Center to help with COVID testing

SEATTLE — A Seattle hospital official says the arrival of 10 army soldiers on Friday is a huge help.

The National Guard members are training to conduct COVID-19 tests at Harborview Medical Center’s employee testing center.

Gov. Inslee announced last week that 100 National Guard members would be deployed to assist eight hospitals in Washington with staffing. Harborview Medical Center is one of those hospitals. The testing site serves the staff, their families, and Seattle’s homeless population.

Mark Taylor, Harborview associate administrator, says they will also help with traffic and paperwork. The additional hands will free up hospital staff to care for patients.

“In order to run this service, we’ve had to deploy staff,” Taylor said in a news release. “These are nurses, medical assistants, [and] administrative staff that would normally be doing functions within the hospital, and we’ve had to deploy them for sort of an unusual work assignment to run this site. This will allow us, at least for a month’s time, to have those folks return to the hospital.”

This story was originally published on MyNorthwest.com.

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