IMPACT
49
SITES
77K
TESTS ADMINISTERED
12
EVENTS
28
PARTNERS
259
PEOPLE TRAINED
79
COMMUNITY HIRES
“This service was very convenient for my family especially when we couldn’t find any available clinics open or even had any available COVID-19 kits. This service was a life saver to get my daughter tested and back in school as soon as possible.”
PARENT
San Francisco Unified School District
(SFUSD)
Timeline of Our COVID Response
COVID-19 Pandemic | Date | Safer Together |
|---|---|---|
COVID-19 pandemic begins | Jan. 2020 | |
California becomes the first state to issue stay at home order, schools close for remainder of school year. | Mar. 2020 | |
Private schools re-open in SF, but public schools remain closed; USA records 100,000 cases in 1 day. | Nov. 2020 | Four parents on a mission found Safer Together to help fellow families in SF. |
FDA approves first COVID vaccines for adults 18 and over. | Dec. 2020 | |
One year since lockdown and public schools in SF are still closed. The U.S. is the global epicenter of pandemic. | Mar. 2021 | We become a licensed clinical laboratory with a CLIA certificate of waiver, allowing us to perform point of care tests. We operationalize on-site rapid antigen testing. |
Our pilot testing program begins at Alta Vista School, testing staff on a weekly basis and then the entire school for their return from spring break. | ||
An estimated 5.1 million women left the workforce when COVID-19 closed schools and child-care centers in 2020. | May 2021 | First CBO partnerships start to form to plan for summer safety for children and youth through the Department of Children, Youth and Families. |
June 2021 | We get our 501(c)(3) status. | |
Slight dip in cases has some declaring the pandemic over. | Summer 2021 | We hire our first batch of community test administrators and provide on-site testing for 8 partners, allowing children, youth, and caretakers to gather safely. |
In late July the Delta Variant sends cases back up right before school starts. | We strengthen our commitment through additional partners, new hires, staff promotions, and a partnership with the UCSF/Chan-Zuckerberg BioHub. | |
The Delta Variant wave dies down, but new variants of concern are appearing across the globe. | Fall 2021 | We increase in partnerships and in impact: by October we’ve done 20,000 tests. |
CDC announces an additional $300 million in funding for community health worker services to support COVID-19 prevention and control. | We begin our Self Admin program, training partners to administer tests in their respective contexts. | |
The first case of the Omicron variant in the U.S. is detected by the California and San Francisco Departments of Public Health. | Dec. 2021 | We launch our partnership with SFUSD schools, boost hiring to meet exponential increase in demand, and increase testing capacity in SF by 20%. |
As omicron wreaks havoc across the country and interest in reliable testing resources grows, over the counter testing supplies decrease. | Jan. 2021 | We administer over 18,000 tests in the month of January alone, including SFUSD testing events totaling over 1,000 tests per day. |
The weekly average of new infections in the U.S. is now six times higher than it was in 2021. New sub variants continue to evolve. | Spring 2022 | We launch our Safer Air community initiative, securing partnerships to provide indoor air quality monitoring and assessments to partner orgs. |
Jun. 2022 | We hold a Corsi-Rosenthal box building event at Alta Vista School, with 46 boxes built. | |
We hit yet another milestone: 70K tests administered. | ||
We launch our new Community Care Specialist role and human development model to build internal capacity. | ||
Aug. 2022 | We launch the at-home testing pilot with families from the SF Brown Bombers community. |