LOS ANGELES – Sean Penn has expanded his battle with the coronavirus beyond his own expectations.
The Oscar-winning crisis aid organization CORE has gone from 6,500 tests in a few weeks to administer more than 1.3 million tests over a five-month period. The organization at 4 sites in Los Angeles and lately operates in 32 locations in cities such as New York, Atlanta, Chicago, Detroit, New Orleans and Washington, DC.
The organization, which began as a foreign rescue group, had originally planned to operate at control sites in Los Angeles for 3 months. It is now expanding and preparing for the winter months, when the virus can simply accumulate and deplete resources.
CORE, which stands for Community Organized Relief Effort, has contracted and volunteered since late March. He has been testing an average of 15,000 other people a day in Los Angeles since May 26, CORE officials said.
Penn applauded the efforts of those who voluntarily assisted his organization in the pandemic.
“We were going to go in and absorb some sites and then expand to other sites,” Penn said in a recent interview, as CORE staff used protection settings to distribute checks at a loose COVID-19 control site in Los Angeles. The organization focuses on offering loose checks to low-income teams and communities, as well as first responders and a must-have staff.
“We recruited very temporarily at first, because other people sought to help,” he said. “They feel a power that’s going to have a genuine impact.”
Penn’s organization has already implemented its own rules called “The Core 8” to fight the virus. Includes check effects delivery within 48 hours, a government-backed touch search system, food and hygiene kits, and monetary assistance for families with positive cases.
The actor hopes that core’s initiative can slow the spread of the virus, especially before more people gather inside due to cooler temperatures. He is involved in the possible lack of resources if positive cases increase.
“Then where are we in the national inventory?” Asked. “Where are we in terms of deploying these resources in the event of sudden increases in strength? I don’t think any of us know that.”
CORE has raised much of its resources through citizens and local governments, as well as the personal and non-profit sector, adding the Rockefeller Foundation and Direct Relief. A few months ago, CORE partnered with the workplace of Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti and the city’s chimney branch to safely distribute loose COVID-19 verification sites for others with eligible symptoms.
“But it’s not a sustainable model,” said Ann Lee, co-founder and CEO of CORE, who also intervened to rebuild Haiti after the 2010 earthquake and devastating Hurricane Matthew. She thought CORE’s viral testing would last only three months as a bridge until government-funded systems took over.
“If we’re going to provide a fifth of the evidence in the United States, basically through personal donations, that says a lot. It’s scary,” he says. “We’re in an area that asks, “Where’s the government? “So that we can keep this consistent, it’s an increasingly vital issue.”
Despite his concerns, Penn said looking at the control sites gave him hope.
“They’re in those tarmacs hour after hour, day after day, six days a week,” he said. “It’s developing and they’re still doing it. So you can only have some kind of hope.”
Follow AP Entertainment Jonathan Landrum Jr. on Twitter: http://twitter.com/MrLandrum31
No one covers Columbus, Indiana and surrounding spaces like the Republic.
2980 N. National Road, Suite A, Columbus, IN 47201