LOUISVILLE, Ky. — Two weeks after launching an appointment-only drive-thru testing site, UofL Health has tested 370 patients. 36 patients have tested positive for COVID-19 as of April 10.
"It really helps us drive the clinics away and extra exposure," Dr. Hugh Shoff said. "They can come through here and stay in their car the whole time and reduce the exposure to the general public."
About 40 patients are tested every day and the drive-thru process takes no longer than five minutes. It takes three days for results to come back.
Dr. Shoff said most of the patients who stop by have mild symptoms. UofL Health is limited to testing hospitalized patients and healthcare workers, but it hopes to expand to better understand the virus.
"The benefit of testing more is to get a feel of what is going on in the community," Shoff said. "If we have widespread exposures to COVID if more people are testing positive, what types of symptoms are they seeing are they mild or not."
With a possible surge, the lack of supplies could make things challenging.
"Right now we do have the testing capability to test the patients we have now, but as that surge comes it will be important for us to monitor the availability of those and it's really hard to tell what that might look like," Shoff said.
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