SafeSite COVID-19 Testing Trailers Bring Labs to Compounds, Stadiums, Schools

Production-truck builder LMG produces the fully equipped and staffed facilities

Since day one of the COVID-19 pandemic, TV networks, leagues, and production entities have grappled with how to effectively test people who have to work, produce, and compete together in any given location. That challenge led Lauren Sexton, who is married to Live Media Group (LMG) founder/CEO Brad Sexton, to launch SafeSite, a testing company with mobile laboratories that can make onsite testing safe, fast, accurate, and effective.

In the early days of the pandemic, now-SafeSite CEO Lauren Sexton was concerned about the spread of the virus due to the lack of testing protocols and, more important, oversight of the testing of apparently well, asymptomatic people. “Testing people who aren’t symptomatic is what needs to happen,” she says. “I was worried about what we didn’t know.”

The exterior of a SafeSite COVID-19 testing-lab trailer

Brad Sexton also was worried, and he realized that his company’s experience and ability to build and distribute broadcast-production vehicles could be applied to building mobile testing-laboratory trailers and deploying them across the country for sports, entertainment, corporate, and education.

“We take production equipment and integrate it in mobile trucks and drive them around nationwide. So why not do the same thing for COVID-19 testing?” says Brad Sexton. “How much space do you need to make a mobile laboratory? That’s when I jumped in, knowing we could help design and engineer the trailers.”

He and Lauren, who is a registered dietician, tapped into her network of medical doctors, epidemiologists, and experts in infectious diseases to develop a medically managed protocol that would allow mobile laboratories to safely, quickly, and accurately test large numbers of people at virtually any location.

The company now has 10 laboratory trailers in strategic locations across the U.S. Measuring between 20 ft. and 28 ft. in length, each trailer can house seven secure testing stations. One mobile lab can easily test and provide results for up to 200 people an hour, all CLIA-certified, and comes stocked with tests, instruments, PPE, licensed staff, and operational equipment to provide a turnkey testing solution to clients.

QR codes provide an extra layer of security for SafeSite clients.

The company’s propriety technology platform, SafeSite PASS, is used to manage the testing protocol and to provide HIPAA-compliant transfer of medical data.  The Web-based app assigns a unique QR code to every tested individual, ensuring that the sample and test results are properly assigned via user profile.

“The samples don’t have to be put on a plane, sent via FEDEX, or sent to an offsite lab,” notes Lauren Sexton. “We have trained and licensed staff processing the samples, and a QR code scanned in from the sample is matched up with a QR code for each person tested.”  Efficiency, accuracy and speed are all vitally important when testing occurs for the purpose of surveillance and group safety.

The touch-less functionality of SafeSite PASS also helps ensure that clients can responsibly test large groups of people as safely as possible, while keeping the flow of sensitive data secure. In addition, clients and attendees have a digital health record of their testing history with specifics on all tests performed.

Beyond a bubble environment, venue setting, or group use, SafeSite PASS can eventually be deployed in the general population as evidence of an individual’s health status and also as an effective and productive tracking and tracing tool.

Each SafeSite trailer has seven testing bays.

SafeSite offers only FDA-approved RT-PCR and antigen tests and equipment provided by Mesa Biotech, Becton Dickinson (BD), and Quidel. Lauren Sexton says that Quidel’s antigen test has shown to be very beneficial when used repetitively in combination with RT-PCR testing. SafeSite develops a unique protocol for each client based on scientific data and risk level. Its most effective protocol combines an antigen test with a confirmatory RT-PCR test, virtually eliminating false results.

SafeSite helped the Pac-12 test upwards of 2,400 football players, coaches, and staff each week during the 2020 season. Testing takes between 15 and 30 minutes, and batch testing of up to 200 tests an hour enabled pregame and game-day testing for the Pac-12 contests with just one laboratory.

“We use different call times, or grouping for social distancing, and then have secure areas where people can sit 6 ft. apart,” says Lauren Sexton. “The beauty is, we create a geo-fenced environment where no one is in unless they are clear to be here.”

Adds Brad Sexton, “SafeSite doesn’t test the sick. They test the well to make sure there is no sick in the well.”

For more information, please contact [email protected] or visit their website, SafeSiteScreening.com.