Facebook group matches dozens of health care workers with empty RVs to self-isolate

A new Facebook group entitled RVs 4 MDs is providing temporary mobile homes for health care workers to isolate themselves amid the coronavirus outbreak and is growing to nationwide outreach, according to CNN.

The group notes that workers in medical facilities and hospitals not only put their own health at risk from COVID-19 but also their family’s health when they come home from potentially contaminated hospitals every day.

The group formed last week to provide doctors and nurses with temporary mobile homes and trailers and has already grown to more than 3,000 members.

The idea for the group started last Monday in Celina, Texas, when Emily Phillips, a mother of three and the wife of an ER doctor, posted on Facebook looking for an RV she could borrow for her husband to quarantine inside.

A woman named Holly Haggard reached out to Phillips and offered her RV for her husband to use to distance himself from the rest of the family.

“Before the RV, I was a nervous wreck. Every time my husband walked in the door or put his hand on something, I thought we were going to get [COVID-19], including my baby,” Phillips told CNN. “But now that he’s in that RV, I’m back to my life, focused on my full-time job and my kids, and it’s completely changed our situation.”

Phillips knew there were other families with doctors and nurses struggling with the same problem, and decided to form RVs 4 MDs with Haggard last Tuesday night to help out others across the nation.

The group grew into a full-on volunteer organization in a single week, forming a board of directors and a volunteer network offering temporary quarantine shelters for health care workers.

Phillips has also recruited attorneys, insurance workers and people in IT to help with the expanding outreach she has formed.

“We need more volunteers to head up the different states,” Phillips said. “A lot of people are out there with nothing to do. Well, we got something to do, and it can really help a lot.”

Phillips said she hoped to expand the volunteer program to Canada and establish an official webpage to help other families with medical workers feel more secure and limit the spread of the virus.

“We’re going to keep it running until there’s not one person left on the planet that needs an RV or needs shelter,” she said. “Whether it’s a storm or whatever the case is, we’ll have this organization for the next crisis because there’s always going to be a need for shelter.”

She said she hopes to keep the program going even after the coronavirus crisis has ended.