DETROIT – City employees make critical visits to the Detroit health department for a coronavirus test. On the other side of the long cotton swab: medical students in protective gear who have volunteered to be on the front line of the fight. “We’ll just go in about an inch, swirl around a couple times,” Michael Moentmann calmly explained before swabbing the nostril of water department employee Leon Wheeler.
Moentmann, 23, had planned to watch surgeries as a medical student at Wayne State University in Detroit, but then a highly contagious virus disrupted everything this spring.
So he signed up in one of America's hardest-hit communities, testing police officers, firefighters, bus drivers and others who keep the city running.