Enterprise hosts drive-up COVID-19 testing clinic

On April 7, the Alabama Department of Public Health held a drive-up testing clinic at the Enterprise Civic Center for those Coffee County residents that showed symptoms of COVID-19.

At the end of the testing period, 41 residents had been tested for the disease.

“I think it went very well,” ADPH Southeastern District Administrator Corey Kirkland said. “Just about all of our patients showed up with a (doctor) referral, so we were able to run them through fairly quickly.

“Everyone was grateful for what we were doing and the setup with the (Coffee County) EMA and the CERT team was wonderful. They were very helpful and I think it went about as good as it could have.”

Despite social media posts that circulated claiming a high number of people were turned away, Kirkland said only 11 people were turned away at the testing clinic.

“I think there might be a little bit of misconception of having to have a physician’s referral,” Kirkland said. “Even if you did not have a physician’s referral but were symptomatic we do have a way that you can be seen (still) at all of our test sites.

“The people that were turned away were non-symptomatic that had no need to be tested.”

Because of the state’s small number of available tests, only those showing symptoms of COVID-19 can be tested currently. While it is required to have a doctor’s referral to be tested at one of the ADPH testing sites, a contract physician with the ADPH is on site as well and can act as the referring physician for those that have symptoms of a fever, cough or shortness of breath and are age 65 or older, are a healthcare worker or a person with conditions that place you at higher risk. Examples of those conditions include diabetes, heart disease, asthma, cancer or other conditions that weaken the immune system.

As of April 9, the ADPH had not received the results of Enterprise’s 41 tests on April 7 but Kirkland said he anticipates having those results sooner rather than later.

“I suspect sometime tomorrow that we’ll start getting a lot of those (tests) back,” Kirkland said. “The problem is we have testing going on all over the state so samples are coming into the state laboratory at the same time. By tomorrow afternoon we will have most – if not all of them back – is my thinking.”

While the likelihood is that there will be tests coming back positive, Kirkland emphasized that there is no need to panic even if there is a high number of those tests that come back positive.

“We tested 78 (people) in Houston County and only four came back positive,” Kirkland said. “We didn’t have a 20-30 (percent) jump or anything but that’s not to say that it couldn’t happen in Coffee County. Regardless, there is no need to panic in this situation.”

Kirkland said that the important thing about this testing process is identifying those that are positive so that they can get healthy and prevent those around them from also getting infected.

“The thing to remember is that once we identify them then our disease identification staff is going to contact them and contact their physician and they’re given instructions on how they should proceed from there,” Kirkland said. “They will self-isolate and then we will give them information on when they should be free of the virus and what they should do if symptoms worsen.

“I think that that also helps them to know what it is they have to do to stay healthy but also what they have to do to make sure that their friends and family are healthy. A lot of people are going to get over it at home. Several people have been sent home from the hospital. So again, there is no reason to panic.”

While there is no timetable on when more testing kits will be available, Kirkland said that they would continue to hold testing clinics all over the Wiregrass.

“We really don’t have enough tests for what we’re doing right now,” he said. “There may be additional test kits (coming) but we don’t have any solid indication on that. We will continue to do our symptomatic (test) clinics until we run out of kits.”

Thus far, 13 Coffee County residents have tested positive for COVID-19 with more than 2,600 positive cases statewide. Coffee County still has not seen any COVID-19 related deaths thankfully, but that number has risen to 48 statewide. More than 330 people have been hospitalized in Alabama due to the virus.