Seattle hospital offers drive-through coronavirus testing for its employees as Washington state’s death toll reaches 22
- The clinic is set up at the University of Washington Medical Center Northwest
- The parking garage clinic has the capacity to see new patient every five minutes
- Coronavirus has caused at least 17 deaths in the Seattle area and infected 83
A Seattle hospital has opened a drive-through clinic to test employees for coronavirus.
The University of Washington Medical Center Northwest has converted the first floor of a parking garage into an infectious disease clinic with the capacity to see a new patient every five minutes.
The patient will then typically get results within a day or so.
University of Washington Medical Center Northwest converted the first floor of a parking garage into an infectious disease clinic with the capacity to see a new patient every five minutes
For now the clinic is only available to the health care system’s workers, who must go online and fill out a survey about their symptoms to get an appointment
Dr Seth Cohen who runs the infectious disease clinic at UW Medical Center Northwest
For now the clinic is only available to the health care system’s workers, who must go online and fill out a survey about their symptoms to get an appointment.
It comes as The White House acknowledged the nation does not have enough coronavirus test kits as cases of the disease continue to rise in the US.
Dr Seth Cohen who runs the infectious disease clinic at UW Medical Center Northwest told NPR: ‘We want to make sure that if our staff test negative we get them back to work as soon as we can.
‘But if they test positive we want to keep them out of the workforce to make sure they’re not going on to infect other staff or patients.’
Coronavirus has already caused at least 17 deaths in the Seattle area and infected at least 83 people.
There are three medical tents on the first floor of the garage as well as signs and orange cones funneling vehicles to the testing site.
Coronavirus has already caused at least 17 deaths in the Seattle area and infected at least 83 people
So far, the drive-through tests have found lots of flu and a few cases of coronavirus
There are three medical tents on the first floor of the garage as well as signs and orange cones funneling vehicles to the testing site
When drivers first come in they are met by a nurse who asks them not to leave the vehicle. Everyone working there is dressed in full protective gear and face masks
The medical center plans to extend in-car testing to first responders who may have been exposed
When drivers first come in they are met by a nurse who asks them not to leave the vehicle. Everyone working there is dressed in full protective gear and face masks.
Patients need to have a fever, dry cough, or other symptoms of COVID-19 – the disease caused by the coronavirus – to be seen at the clinic.
Two swabs are then taken through the open window, one from each nostril. The samples are then tested at a lab a few miles away.
The medical center plans to extend in-car testing to first responders who may have been exposed.
So far, the drive-through tests have found lots of flu and a few cases of coronavirus, Cohen says.
Last week Vice-President Mike Pence said the Trump administration would not be able to meet its objective of delivering one million testing kits for that week.
The Seattle-area nursing home at the epicenter of one of the biggest coronavirus outbreaks in the United States said on Monday it had no kits to test 65 employees showing symptoms of the respiratory illness that has killed at least 13 patients at the long-term care center.
The staff in question, representing more than a third of the Life Care Center’s 180 employees, are out sick with symptoms consistent with coronavirus, and a federal strike team of nurses and doctors is helping to care for 53 patients remaining in the center.