A public health vehicle was unveiled during a press conference in Fort Myers on Thursday.
It is the first of what Lee County Commissioner Brian Hamman said will be three vehicles that will provide health services to the community.
“This unit was actually a former ambulance and it can be used for COVID-19 testing throughout this pandemic but it can also be used for flu vaccines and for any other community public health response that’s necessary,” Hamman said.
The vehicles were made possible through a collaboration between the Department of Health in Lee County and local government officials.
“The vision is to bring the testing to the communities,” Hamman said. “You see, some don’t make it to the drive up sites and some don't have the means to get to doctor’s offices so in those cases, we can bring the resources to those communities.”
For now, the vehicle will be used to conduct COVID-19 tests and provide flu vaccines.
DOH-Lee administrator Angela Smith said the department would like as many people as possible to get flu vaccines this year.
“As you can imagine, we don’t know a lot about what co-infection with influenza and COVID look like, the research is still looking at that, however anecdotally we can assume that that would not be an optimal situation to get into,” Smith said. “So by reducing the flu transmission in the community by vaccination we’re hopeful that we can tamp the flu down enough that we’re still only focusing with minimal flu cases if we’re still dealing with COVID.”
Hamman said nine community walk up health events are planned for the month of September using the health vehicle. More information can be found at LeeGov.com.
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