The Indiana Department of Health is ramping up COVID-19 testing, as demand shoots back up. During a press conference Wednesday, State Health Commissioner Dr. Kris Box apologized for the long wait times experienced at testing sites.
“The demand for testing skyrocketed right about the same time many of our testing sites across the state were kind of decreasing the amount and hours that they were available to do testing, which we know has resulted in some prolonged waits and frustrations,” Box said.
Now, she says the state is calling back National Guard members and sending them to local health departments and reassigning many Indiana Department of Health employees back to testing from their routine jobs. The state is also directing vaccination sites to offer tests, as well.
But Box says a big part of the current surge is children, as parents want to make sure they’re clear to go back to school. To address that, state officials are looking to hire an outside health care agency to bring COVID-19 testing to schools by October. “We believe as we go forward, even as this Delta surge comes down, what we’re going to see is more cases of RSV, more cases of influenza are going to complicate the picture of whether this is COVID, whether this is influenza, whether this is RSV, and individuals are going to want to be able to be tested and rule out COVID,” Box said.
During Wednesday’s press conference, Governor Holcomb said he’s encouraged that more people want to get tested. “So we’ll continue to look at, in counties, how we can be more helpful closer to the ground, so that those testing results are more immediate,” he said.
The governor said he’s gotten reports of testing site wait times as long as two to three hours.
