Johnson County to randomly select 2,000 residents for drive-thru coronavirus testing
With more coronavirus test kits in hand, Johnson County will begin testing hundreds of randomly selected residents at a drive-thru location on Friday.
It is part of the first phase of a $400,000 county program aimed at expanding community testing in order to better collect data on the outbreak of COVID-19. Only residents who receive an invitation via email from the county are allowed to get tested at the drive-thru location.
County officials have been worried about the program stalling due to a nationwide shortage of swabs and sample collection kits. But Sanmi Areola, public health director, announced Wednesday afternoon that the county has purchased and received hundreds of highly sought swabs and can begin the wider community testing.
Quest Diagnostics sent the county 500 swabs already this week. Areola said Monday that those will be used to test high-risk residents, such as nursing home clients, health care workers, first responders and grocery store employees.
The company plans to send another 500 next week. Olathe Health System has agreed to send a shipment of 400 swabs, Areola said, and the county expects to receive hundreds more from University of Kansas Health System.
The county has identified private labs with the capacity to process the tests once the samples are collected by the health department. Officials will analyze the testing data to determine if mitigation strategies, such as the stay at home order, are helping limit the outbreak.
“We feel pretty good about where we are right now in terms of getting the testing we need to get done in the county,” Areola said during a virtual press conference Wednesday.
With the Kansas health department limiting testing to only hospitalized residents due to statewide shortages, the Johnson County Board of Commissioners allocated the funding to purchase the county’s own test kits. Areola has said the goal is to test about 4,000 randomly selected residents — with or without symptoms — to analyze how the virus is spreading throughout the community.
“It is important to sample people without symptoms because we know you can carry the virus and be asymptomatic,” Areola said.
The county is working with an Olathe-based marketing firm, ETC Institute, to develop a randomized sampling pool, send out online surveys and then instruct selected residents to go get tested.
The first group of about 500 residents will receive an email and be directed to go get tested beginning Friday at a drive-thru location next to Olathe Northwest High School on College Boulevard, Areola said. Groups of residents will continue to be tested over the coming weeks, until the total reaches at least 2,000 people — about half the number of Areola originally hoped for.
The county will also test some residents who respond to an online survey and report symptoms consistent with coronavirus, including a fever and dry cough. So far, Areola said about 1,600 residents with symptoms have responded, out of about 47,000 people who have taken the survey.
The survey is available at jocogov.org. Residents will be asked to repeat the survey multiple times in the coming weeks.
Meanwhile, the county is sending sample collection kits to 40 long-term care facilities, some of which have reported confirmed cases or deaths due to coronavirus. Areola said the county is examining the spread of the virus in three facilities: Lakeview Village, Homestead of Olathe Memory Care and Forest Creek Memory Care.
The majority of the county’s 11 deaths have taken place at those facilities, which have reported 33 cases and seven deaths, said health department spokeswoman Barbara Mitchell.
“I will say that memory care facilities and independent living facilities do present challenges in terms of residents following social-distancing instructions,” he said. “Some of these facilities have challenges related to staffing. We’re looking for ways to address that with them.”
More than 1,000 Kansans have been diagnosed with the new coronavirus and 38 people have died from it, state health officials announced Wednesday. In Johnson County, at least 244 cases have been reported.
