Listen to medical assistant and Black American Chanel L.— raised in New York and resided in Queens during the Covid-19 pandemic—share about working in-person as an essential worker during the pandemic.

On working-from-home during the pandemic:

“…At the beginning of the pandemic I was working at an urgent care and we were kind of at the center of the testing… We were swabbing people and really putting ourselves at risk… I worked the entire time. We never transitioned to working from home. So, at the beginning of 2020 when we got the stay-at-home order the urgent care was definitely at the epicenter of swabbing people, and we really got to see the best of people and also the worst of people… They were calling people that worked in our field superheroes and we had people who really believed that and they were super grateful… During this time the urgent care that I worked at was only testing essential workers and there were people who really weren’t fond of that stipulation. So, we got to see the worst of people too. So, a lot of our centers had to have security or police on standby, because people were getting cursed out or assaulted or spit on…”