MIAMI — Talent Testing Service (TTS) head Sixto Pacheco held a teleconference today announcing the company’s labs will formally incorporate COVID-19 testing into their PASS reports of adult industry talent.
Pacheco also said TTS is encouraging crew and other non-performers to test for COVID-19 before working on adult sets.
The extra testing will be priced at an additional $35.
“In terms of TTS, we do see talent that are being tested,” Pacheco said. “Talent are choosing to be tested for COVID — we don’t know if they are shooting or not, that is not something that we ask. If talent come up positive for COVID-19, they are not going to be cleared to work. If they’re negative, they’re negative.”
“Notwithstanding,” Pacheco added, “next week we’re gonna start doing programming in our system and we are gonna add COVID-19 as part of our algorithm, so it will be formally part of our report when we transmit a clear status.”
“To go back into the pool, you’re gonna have two negative results within a period of 24 hours,” he added.
Pacheco said that between May 11 and the week of May 18, “Miami, Northridge, Vegas and Oakland will have the necessary supplies to implement the testing and then we’re gonna roll out with other locations.”
“I know it’s been a very trying 35 or 40 days,” Pacheco told the teleconference audience, a who’s-who of adult industry stakeholders. “I wanted to give you an update of how things are going.”
In a teleconference that began at 11 a.m. (PDT), Pacheco explained that TTS’s parent company, Biocollections Worldwide, through their research facility in Miami, has been developing COVID-19 molecular tests since February 4.
He admitted the initial response to the pandemic, nationwide, had been “a little lackadaisical” and that he did not think it would be as serious as it became.
On March 18, Pacheco said, Biocollections participated in a conference call with the FDA where they received approval to “start testing immediately in response to the growing concern they had with the spike in cases.”
Of 4,000 concerned people who asked for tests from the general public, Sixto said, 18% had tested positive for COVID-19.
Pacheco explained that he is aware that adult talent are currently testing and many of them have asked TTS for COVID-19 tests.
“Talent are coming in,” Pacheco said. “If they’re coming in, we might as well protect them as well as we can.”
“We are gonna test them, and we’re gonna put it [into PASS],” he said.
Michelle LeBlanc, director of the Free Speech Coalition (FSC), which administers the PASS system, expressed concern about how the COVID-19 test would be integrated, particularly in respect to the incubation period.
The current PASS system only tests for sexually transmitted infections (STIs), and accounts for a two-week incubation period.
Agency owners who questioned Pacheco were also concerned about their liability if they sent talent to test and then they contracted or spread COVID-19 after being cleared to work.
"We are working on updating PASS so that it can accept COVID-19 test results from the PASS lab network," LeBlanc told XBIZ after the teleconference. "We are also working on a way to have crew be able to be included in PASS."
"The production hold is still in effect," she added.
