When COVID-19 rolled over the United States, and the trade show and events industry went into a global shutdown, Aardvark Mobile Tours' fleets of buses, trailers, and mobile show rooms sat idle. There were a couple of sleepless weeks for Larry Borden, founder and CEO of Aardvark, who was worried he might have to shutter the business. "It got really dark," Borden said. But while reading the news one morning, he found a unique opportunity to fight against the pandemic – and keep his employees working at the same time.

"One of the news stories that morning was about an Israeli company converting shipping containers into mobile testing sites and placing them in neighborhoods around the country," Borden said. "It was a genius idea but full of logistical challenges." At the time, communities in the United States were developing drive-thru testing sites. However, those sites were increasingly hampered by long lines and were not particularly accessible to people who didn't own a car. The Israeli solution was useful in that it delivered testing sites directly where they were needed. The problem, as Borden saw it, was that the shipping containers were cumbersome and expensive. The converted units had to be loaded onto trailers with cranes, delivered to a site, unloaded with cranes, leveled, and then fed power and air conditioning. And the tedious process had to be repeated when it came time to relocate the containers.

"The more I thought about the article, the more I thought 'We could actually do this better than they're doing it!'" Borden said. With relatively minor modifications to its patented trucks, Aardvark envisioned being able to deploy testing facilities to needed areas with the simple turn of the ignition. He and his team immediately began researching negative and positive air pressure for safe circulation, Clinical Laboratory Improvement Amendments (CLIA) certification, sanitization, etc.

The result was a turnkey mobile testing facility that protected medical staff by allowing them to administer tests from a self-contained, climate-controlled room on the back of the truck. And clever engineering kept providers completely separated from the patients, decreasing the chance of exposure. "We were able to build a vehicle that was exactly what this pandemic needed," he said. The mobile unit could be set up and taken down in as little as 10 minutes. And it could be rapidly deployed to rural areas with little access to testing, to urban areas for those without vehicles, and to just about every type of community in between.

Aardvark delivered its first truck to Florida, where the Department of Emergency Management was impressed and immediately placed an order for a fleet. "Since then, it's been off to the races," Borden said. "We are now building in three plants across the United States, and we can't keep up with demand." The units are being deployed across the country, and in one week the mobile facilities visited 175 different sites. Aardvark is currently talking with countries around the world, which are looking to use the company's solution.

Since Aardvark's own drivers operate and maintain most of the vehicles (with the exception of administering or handling tests, which is done by medical professionals), the company receives constant field research that helps it continuously adapt its models. For instance, trucks shifted from having one testing window to two to double throughput. And now Aardvark has models with four windows so that providers who screen patients are protected just like test administrators. The company is also now CLIA Biosafety Level 2 certified, meaning it can produce trucks that include labs on the vehicle, saving precious time in delivering results.

And with an eye toward the future, Aarvark has ensured the vehicles can be inexpensively converted into vaccine administration facilities, which may prove critical in the coming months. Borden also envisions the trucks being used as community mobile health centers long after COVID-19 is a bad memory. "Initially, I was just looking to keep the lights on and keep my people working," Borden said. "Now we've created a new business segment that will long outlive the pandemic." Because of the surge in business, Aardvark is even hiring across all departments. "It was very important to me to keep my people working and try to make the impact of COVID as minimal as possible on my employees' lives," Borden said. "And I was able to provide full end-of-year bonuses for every one of my employees, which was a personal objective for me. And I'm going to be proud of that for the rest of my life."