Indiana will not be able to test every resident of a long-term care facility for COVID-19 by the end of the month. “That would be over 100,000 individuals by the end of the month, and I can assure you, unfortunately, that is not going to happen,” State Health Commissioner Dr. Kris Box said during Wednesday’s press conference. “But we are working to make sure that we are testing all of our employees of long-term care facilities.”
Box said her goal is to have all of those workers tested by mid-June. The problem so far is that is that the State Department of Health doesn’t always know whether a long-term care facility worker has been tested. “There are individuals that go out and get tested on their own, and there’s no data that comes back as a test is reported that this is a worker who is employed at a long-term care facility,” Box explained. “Any time there is a case and we go in and do the testing and test all of the employees and that, then that information we do have and we do gather that information.”
As for how often they’ll be retested, Box said she’s waiting for more guidance from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, as well as the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
