According to County Manager Matthew Landers, 350 people signed up for Genesee County’s first free COVID-19 testing event held at the Genesee County Emergency Management Office and Fire Training Center on State street road in the Town of Batavia on Thursday.
In the first 100 asymptomatic people tested, 3 were found to be positive according to Paul Pettit, Genesee/Orleans County Public Health Director. About 30 volunteers/county staff are assisting the Health Department with processing at the testing events.
“By focusing on asymptomatic we can get those folks, get them identified, get them under isolation and hopefully break that chain of transmission in the community,” says Pettit.
Pettit says by testing the asymptomatic there is a broader pool of sampling being done which helps the positivity rate in the area.
“It’s going to give us an idea of the folks in the community that may be positive that don’t have symptoms that may be contributing to our higher numbers that we have been seeing over the last month.”
Asymptomatic people would not have normally been tested, Pettit says. They would have been out in the community, hanging out with their friends and family or doing different activities.
“It’s widespread, its everywhere in our community, we don’t have any corners of the county that are unaffected. We all have loved ones that may have underlying health conditions or other issues like age, immune compromised, bottom line is we want to make sure we are protecting those most vulnerable folks, especially since we are inching closer to a vaccine and our positivity rate is so high. The more we can identify and prevent those folks from interacting and having community spread, the better.”
Pettit says the free COVID-19 testing sites will be available to the public every Tuesday and Thursday from 1-4p.m. at the Genesee County Emergency Management Office on State street road. Sign ups will be online and a link will go live tomorrow sometime.
Orleans County will have a free COVID-19 testing site up and running on Wednesday afternoons beginning on December 16, 2020, the time and location to be announced.
The plan is to continue the sites until January or however long they are needed.
“We are at a point now where a few weeks ago we started to receive some of these rapid test kits, and we are trying to build up an inventory to use with the schools if we go into one of the color zones, but now we are getting enough where we have a good amount of supply and the state has committed to back fill, we now feel we have a pretty good amount of a chain supply coming in, obviously there is a need.”
Pettit says he has listened to many heartbreaking stories over the past few months where asymptomatic people have been trying to get tested to get into nursing homes to visit their loved one, a test required by the state, but they do not have the $200 for the test.
“We need this, this is something we have been asking for months and months and our folks have had to travel to Rochester and Buffalo, and we didn’t have anyplace local to test asymptomatic, because insurances won’t pay for it.”
Before today, residents in Genesee and Orleans counties had to travel to state testing sites at MCC in Monroe County and in Erie County, off S. Park Avenue in Buffalo, for a free test. Recently, the wait time to schedule a test at those sites has been almost a week.
“It’s not appropriate that our folks have to travel 45 minutes to an hour to get that test for free. We’re very proud of the county administration and legislators in both Genesee and Orleans County that made this commitment that they want this testing to happen, we really rallied the troops with all the volunteers who are here today and who are taking time out of their own day to help out and serve our community.”
