Fresno will get state help to increase COVID-19 testing. County will host town hall
Fresno has been selected as one of the locations for new state COVID-19 test sites.
California Gov. Gavin Newsom announced Wednesday new contracts with companies Verily and OptumServe to open 86 new testing sites in “testing deserts” in rural, African American and Latino communities.
The Fresno location will conduct over 100 tests per day for a wide variety of symptomatic and asymptomatic people, including those who work in the public sector or are at a high risk of contracting COVID-19, the coronavirus, or who want to be a part of Fresno’s coronavirus surveillance project, Fresno County Interim Health Officer Dr. Rais Vohra said on Wednesday afternoon.
Earlier this week, Vohra reported that new recommendations from health experts showed Fresno County should be conducting six to 10 times more tests each day. Currently, Fresno County conducts anywhere from 150 to 250 tests a day. The new recommendations suggest testing 152 people per 100,000 residents, he said.
Patients will be able to sign up for the tests online or over the phone. The location has not yet been determined, Vohra said.
“I’m very optimistic that we will be able to get to our goal of testing about 1,500 people every day to make sure that we’re identifying every single cluster and infection of the COVID across the county,” he said.
In addition to the new state location, hospitals, medical providers and other partners in Fresno County also are eager to ramp up testing capacity, Vohra said.
As of Wednesday, 5,327 Fresno County residents were tested for coronavirus, and there were 384 positive cases.
Newsom has pointed to testing as the top factor officials are monitoring to determine when the state can begin to relax restrictions. He set a statewide goal of testing 25,000 people per day and anticipates a testing task force to exceed that goal by the end of the month.
Town hall meeting Friday
Fresno County Department of Public Health and UCSF Fresno are partnering to hold a public town hall meeting on Facebook Live at 4 p.m. on Friday. Details will be rolled out later this week.
By the numbers
Through Wednesday, the six-county central San Joaquin Valley region’s total number of positive cases was 987. There have been 38 deaths in the region related to coronavirus.
This story was originally published April 22, 2020 at 6:58 PM.