A trip to the grocery store, a long bike ride through a park, a stroll through our neighborhoods. These are the precious trips we have all come to look forward to during the recent stay-at-home orders.

These moments – like our pre-pandemic trips to work, school and restaurants – paint an intimate portrait of our daily lives.  And this is precisely the information that the government wants to collect from you.

A coronavirus antibody testing program and study is underway in Ventura County, aimed at determining the prevalence of people with antibodies in certain vulnerable populations to ensure the county is prepared for future responses to the virus.

“There’s still much we don’t know about the epidemiology of COVID-19,” said Dr. Paul Hsu, epidemiologist with UCLA, which is conducting the study. “We’re finding that this disease affects certain groups disproportionately, and this study will help us learn about populations that may not have been well-studied in the past.”

The uninsured, in many cases unemployed, people who lined up Wednesday at a Thousand Oaks free clinic for free produce, brown rice and antibody tests may be soldiers in the fight against COVID-19.

As part of a project expanding across Ventura County, patrons of the Westminister Free Clinic's health care and food distribution programs bared their arms for blood draws designed to reveal antibodies showing they once carried the coronavirus.