Across the United States, doctors are seeing another surge of the Coronavirus. This means more testing and San Luis Obispo County is considering adding extra lanes at testing sites to keep up.
Right now the county operates two testing sites – one at the Veterans’ Hall in San Luis Obispo and then in Centennial Park in Paso Robles.
County officials say they’re evaluating whether to increase the sites but are definitely looking to increase the staff.
“On Monday we actually had a record-breaking day on our San Luis Obispo," said Vince Pierucci, the Incident Commander for the County of San Luis Obispo’s COVID-19 Response. "We actually had a little over 340 people come through that's the highest number we have seen throughout this entire pandemic,” said Pierucci.
Back in July, Governor Gavin Newsom announced that all state and healthcare workers must provide evidence of their vaccination or submit to weekly COVID-19 testing.
“The state has opened up a special website where these healthcare facilities and doctors' offices can request tests directly from the state,” said Pierucci, who adds healthcare workers can also go through the county to get tested.
Despite more and more people catching the virus, along with the more contagious delta variant, the county says they are not testing everyone for variants.
“We would love for it to happen, it'd be 100% however, because of the increased testing demand, we're only able to do random sampling," explained Pierucci.
Private urgent cares and physicians offices are still testing as well.
"Primarily the two tests that are coming from the state that help with this new state health officer order are both the Binax test which is a rapid test, as well as the Q, which is another new test new rapid test that's on the market," said Pierucci.
If someone tests positive, the county will receive a notification immediately. Then the public health lab will let the individual or their employer know about the positive case, he said.
People can find further information on testing as well as locations at the SLO County website.
