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The hiring line
Certain lab roles needed licensed people, but administrative roles did not, and plenty of people wanted to work on the pandemic. Candidates lined up in the parking lot, socially distanced, down the street. Each got a five-minute interview slot with someone holding a clipboard, which got the volume of people through the door.
Early hires were told it was a three-month job and not to count on anything beyond it. The CFO, now Curative's president, came out of retirement for what was meant to be six months, and six years later she is still there. After each surge the founder figured it would be over, and the surges kept coming.
The peak
Curative went from zero to a peak day of 26,000 people tested in December 2020, eight months in. One of its biggest sites was the drive-through at Dodger Stadium in LA, with seven lanes of traffic from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m., seven days a week, testing about 10,000 people a day at peak.
Why did drive-through testing spread so fast?
South Korea popularized drive-through Covid testing in February 2020, in the city of Goyang. People stay in their cars, which limits contact with staff and with other people. Staff can change protective gear between cars instead of managing a waiting room. Large parking lots, like stadium lots, can fit many lanes.
Why can unlicensed staff work in a lab operation?
US lab rules under the Clinical Laboratory Improvement Amendments set personnel requirements by the complexity of the test. Licensed or degreed staff must perform and oversee the testing steps themselves. Many surrounding jobs, such as registration, check-in, sample logistics, and data entry, have no such requirement. A testing operation can staff those roles quickly from the general workforce.
Why did Covid surges keep coming in waves?
New variants such as Alpha, Delta, and Omicron each spread through populations at different times. Winter indoor gathering and waning immunity also contributed to the peaks. The US saw a large winter surge starting in late 2020, and the Omicron wave in early 2022 brought record daily case counts, according to CDC data. Each wave sent testing demand up quickly.
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