JULY 2020 • LONGISLANDPRESS.COM 9
IN THE NEWS
PANDEMIC RESPONSE
FIGHTING FOR SURVIVORS
BY TIMOTHY BOLGER
Vanessa Baird-Streeter, the last member
of Suffolk County Executive Steve
Bellone’s administration still working
from its Hauppauge office during the
coronavirus pandemic’s peak, recently
learned that she tested positive for
COVID-19 antibodies.
Her test results come after she was
promoted to deputy county executive
for community recovery, a job in
which she’s tasked with helping Suffolk
residents cope with a coronavirus
diagnosis and the ensuing economic
hardship.
“I was really perplexed and shocked,”
Baird-Streeter says, noting that she
has a high level of antibodies. “I might
have had a slight headache one day
but it went away very quickly … I was
really asymptomatic.”
Two of Bellone’s senior aides were previously
diagnosed with COVID-19. The
county executive and most of his team
had to be quarantined for two weeks
after coming in contact with the diagnosed
aides, but Baird-Streeter didn’t
have to isolate herself since her office
is on the other side of the building.
For Baird-Streeter — the first African
American woman to be named a
deputy Suffolk County executive — the
test results prove the importance of
wearing personal protective equipment
(PPE), since she had no idea at the
time that she could have been spreading
the virus, were she not following
the proper safety protocols.
Emphasizing the preventative value
of PPE is among the messages she has
been focusing on at the county’s hotspot
testing sites in Huntington, Brentwood,
Riverhead, Amityville, Coram,
and her hometown of Wyandanch.
“When we first saw our first cases
of people with COVID-19, it was very
far out east,” she says. “We saw very
quickly that there was an exponential
increase in communities of color.”
Anyone tested at the hot-spot sites
Suffolk County Deputy County Executive Vanessa Baird-Street, right, visit a
COVID-19 hot spot testing site.
is given a packet with instructions
on what to do if diagnosed, such as
self-isolate, clean shared bathrooms
after each use, and take their temperature
twice daily.
“Access to health information is just as
important as testing,” she says. “People
had anxiety based on going to get tested
for COVID. You could actually see it
in their faces.”
The education campaign helped lower
the infection rates in the hot-spot communities
to more on par with the rest
of the county, she says.
For those diagnosed, the county works
with HRH Care Center, a federally
qualified healthcare provider that
offers providers for those not connected
to a doctor, whether the patient is
insured or not. She’s also exploring
telehealth options with the county’s
Office of Minority Health.
Other community-based health initiatives
Baird-Streeter has overseen
include ensuring the migrant farmer
community on the East End has access
to PPE, having a cardiologist’s
bus-based mobile office visit Bellport,
coordinating with food banks, and
having 311 operators stay on the line
when they transfer callers to service
providers to ensure a connection is
made.
Of course, since the county’s unemployment
rate skyrocketed from 4.1
percent in March to 16.4 percent in
April as a result of the coronavirus
shutdown, local businesses have also
been a focus of hers.
On the economic side, she has been
working with local leaders to modify
the phased reopening when necessary,
reimagining what access to job training
will look like in a virtual format,
and launching a new virtual job board
for those seeking employment. As for
employers, she’s been helping small
businesses get PPE, loans, and other
resources.
“At the end of the day, we’re all affected
by this virus and we all need to work
together to move forward and recover
from the effects of the coronavirus,”
she says.
And given her experience, the mission
is personal.
“I did have people that were close to
me that were very much affected by
the coronavirus,” she says, noting
that a good friend was hospitalized
for five weeks and another friend’s
wife succumbed to the virus. “When
I saw people try to call it a hoax or say
it's fake news … it was very troubling
to me because I have firsthand knowledge
of what the virus can do to you.”
“We’re all affected by this virus and we all need to
work together,” says Vanessa Baird-Streeter.
/LONGISLANDPRESS.COM
