Year At Helm Of Hoboken Coronavirus Hotline: What Volunteers Saw

HOBOKEN, NJ — A group of Hoboken volunteers has been staffing a coronavirus hotline in a room in City Hall for a little over a year, helping residents (and passing celebrities) find tests, vaccines, food, and answers to their questions — even when all of those were in short supply.

At first, volunteers say, they thought they'd be jockeying the phone lines for a few weeks — but as the pandemic became more serious, they realized they were in it for the long haul.

"Every time we saw a light at the end of the tunnel…" said volunteer Jack Silbert in an interview earlier this month.

"It was a train," joked volunteer John Branciforte.

But the volunteers have learned a lot by sitting at their long table over 12 months, handling unusual questions, jockeying up to six phone lines at once, and learning about new symptoms from the callers.

What in the world are ‘covid toes’?

“At every stage, we got what seem to be weird call at first,” said hotline coordinator John Dalton, “but it turned out to be a new symptom. One morning, someone called and said they had ‘covid toes.’ We didn’t know what ‘covid toes’ were at the time.” (The skin symptom, also known as chilblains, has been identified by dermatologists.)

The volunteers’ experience is a testament to how little was known about coronavirus a year ago, at a time when all but the sickest patients were told to avoid emergency rooms, and testing was not widely available.

On March 10, 2020, New Jersey announced its first of now more than 21,727 covid-related deaths.

What they got asked

Hoboken’s CERT Team – Community Emergency Response Team – is a group of trained volunteers who pitch in during emergencies such as after Hurricane Sandy in 2012, when the city lost power. Some of the volunteers from back then were still around to staff the call center.

John Dalton, the coordinator of the center, is a private IT consultant for small businesses. He said he was able to volunteer because – after helping some of his clients go remote last spring – some didn’t need his help as often, and others unfortunately went out of business.

Indeed, life has changed for Hoboken’s residents and businesses in the last 12 months. Hoboken is directly across the river from Midtown Manhattan, offering 8-minute train rides to the World Trade Center. After the mayor began restricting playgrounds and businesses in March as a precaution — the first city in the area to do so — life changed.

Fewer people commuted to jobs in Manhattan, restaurants shifted their focus to delivery and takeout, the CERT volunteers had to shift their focus as well.

They started out on March 11 by handing out flyers at the train station and ferry stops, containing information about precautions. Three days later, they opened the call center.

Dalton said he figured the volunteers’ efforts would be for “a few weeks, a month or two maybe. We had no idea. We didn’t expect to be doing this a year later.”

Dalton said he only understood this would be a long-term gig when the city set up its massive outdoor testing center under the 14th Street Viaduct and the northern entrance to town. At first, people had to call CERT to set up an appointment.

The outdoor facility, run by the city and Riverside Medical Group, ultimately performed more than 10,000 tests through October, when it was moved indoors amid dropping temperatures. It made statewide news and resulted in travelers and even celebrities calling for a test.

Celebrity phone calls

Among the most unusual calls the call center has gotten, according to the volunteers, was a man traveling through the area from Massachusetts to Delaware who wanted to pay for a test.

“One guy was driving on Route 95,” Dalton said. “He said, ‘How much money can I pay you to get a test?’ It was very unusual. Channel 12 did a story about testing in Hoboken, so people started calling us. This guy probably Googled ‘rapid testing for covid’ and found Hoboken. We had to talk him out of it.”

The testing was only available to residents and workers within the mile-square city.

“He was pretty sure he was going to walk in and get a test,” Dalton said.

They’ve also gotten calls from well-known people, the volunteers said.

“We have Caller ID,” said a volunteer. “Sometimes you see a name you recognize. There have been prominent callers.”

They got a call from former Major League Baseball player Carlos Pena when he was in the area broadcasting during the playoffs, the volunteers said, but he was not a Hoboken resident.

People falling through the cracks

The city now has an online system to schedule tests (check all the options here) and a system for scheduling vaccines for those in town who are eligible http://www.hobokennj.gov/vaccinesignup. (For more Hudson County vaccine info, click our weekly roundup here.)

But the CERT call center has helped with a lot of other functions for people in need who didn’t know where to turn.

CERT volunteers helped set up a food pantry for residents who couldn’t access or afford food and personal hygiene items last year. Now, the Hoboken Food Pantry is fully run by other volunteers and celebrated its one-year anniversary this week.

The volunteers helped many others who might have fallen through the cracks, like seniors living alone in Hoboken’s aging brownstones, rather than in senior buildings.

The volunteers gave credit to CERT member Maggie Shields, who handles the more complex calls from people needing social services. Shield says that because she was a single mom, she learned how to navigate the right services, a challenge difficult enough for those with resources to navigate, much less for those down on their luck.

The volunteers expressed that people should not hesitate to ask for help.

Right now, the CERT hotlines are:

• 201-420-5621: Covid Testing and Vaccination information and followup
• 201-420 5620: General COVID information for Hoboken residents
• 201-420-5625: Information and assistance for Seniors

They’re currently answering the lines from 9 a.m. to noon, during weekdays except Wednesday.

CERT has trained more than 200 people in Hoboken and has 150 active members. Approximately 40 staffed the call center over the past year. Find out more on their website.

As of Wednesday, more than 545,000 Americans had died of coronavirus. (State statistics are available on this CDC map.)

Related news

• Hoboken To Get More Pfizer Vaccines
• City Encourages Homebound Residents To Register For Johnson & Johnson Vaccine

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