City, County Preparing To Offer COVID-19 Testing With CARES Act Funding
June 2, 2020 at 2:02 a.m.
City, County Preparing To Offer COVID-19 Testing With CARES Act Funding
By David [email protected]
That includes a public awareness campaign and free coronavirus testing.
“We’ve had some pretty reasonable increases in the positive COVID-19 testing in our community,” he said.
He said he received an email from the Kosciusko County Health Department on Friday that there was some concern in areas with dense housing, specifically trailer parks. The city and county jumped on that, with the KCHD developing a bilingual door hangar, which were delivered Monday to the mobile home parks. Volunteers from the Latino Coalition accompanied firefighters and volunteer firefighters to deliver those, he said, to every mobile home park in the county, with the majority expected to be delivered by Monday night.
Several hundred brochures also were produced to get out to all the grocery stores and restaurants “to create a massive public awareness campaign,” Thallemer said. The KCHD also has established English and Spanish hotlines for COVID-19.
“I think from a public awareness standpoint we’ve done what we can,” Thallemer said.
The “second step,” he said is that “we’re working to develop a free COVID-19 testing procedure with the county.” The details of it will be announced at Wednesday’s weekly press briefing, if not sooner, he said.
“We have the availability of the CARES money that we talked about. The city was allocated $484,000 of CARE Act money, and the county was allocated around $2.5 million. Testing fits right into what is allowed with this,” Thallemer said.
He said he called the governor’s office Friday to see if Kosciusko County was going to get an Optum test site. An Optum test site is a free test site that the state has been providing counties where COVID-19 numbers are the highest. As of a few weeks ago, Kosciusko County’s numbers were “fairly low,” Thallemer said. “So we are not on the list for an Optum test site.”
The state is continuing to watch the numbers, and if Kosciusko’s figures keep rising and spikes, the state could come do some mobile testing or an Optum test site, he indicated.
“And locally, again, working with the county, we feel like that’s a great utilization of those CARE dollars at least as a gap until we can get some state testing in light of the fact our numbers have risen,” he said.
Details on the local testing program and how it will work will be unveiled by Wednesday morning.
That includes a public awareness campaign and free coronavirus testing.
“We’ve had some pretty reasonable increases in the positive COVID-19 testing in our community,” he said.
He said he received an email from the Kosciusko County Health Department on Friday that there was some concern in areas with dense housing, specifically trailer parks. The city and county jumped on that, with the KCHD developing a bilingual door hangar, which were delivered Monday to the mobile home parks. Volunteers from the Latino Coalition accompanied firefighters and volunteer firefighters to deliver those, he said, to every mobile home park in the county, with the majority expected to be delivered by Monday night.
Several hundred brochures also were produced to get out to all the grocery stores and restaurants “to create a massive public awareness campaign,” Thallemer said. The KCHD also has established English and Spanish hotlines for COVID-19.
“I think from a public awareness standpoint we’ve done what we can,” Thallemer said.
The “second step,” he said is that “we’re working to develop a free COVID-19 testing procedure with the county.” The details of it will be announced at Wednesday’s weekly press briefing, if not sooner, he said.
“We have the availability of the CARES money that we talked about. The city was allocated $484,000 of CARE Act money, and the county was allocated around $2.5 million. Testing fits right into what is allowed with this,” Thallemer said.
He said he called the governor’s office Friday to see if Kosciusko County was going to get an Optum test site. An Optum test site is a free test site that the state has been providing counties where COVID-19 numbers are the highest. As of a few weeks ago, Kosciusko County’s numbers were “fairly low,” Thallemer said. “So we are not on the list for an Optum test site.”
The state is continuing to watch the numbers, and if Kosciusko’s figures keep rising and spikes, the state could come do some mobile testing or an Optum test site, he indicated.
“And locally, again, working with the county, we feel like that’s a great utilization of those CARE dollars at least as a gap until we can get some state testing in light of the fact our numbers have risen,” he said.
Details on the local testing program and how it will work will be unveiled by Wednesday morning.
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