A Test Iowa clinic has been approved for Wapello County. | Unsplash
A Test Iowa clinic has been approved for Wapello County. | Unsplash
A Test Iowa clinic for the Wapello County area has been approved by the Wapello County Board of Supervisors, which will help take pressure off hospitals and other clinics with COVID-19 case surges.
“The goal is still the same: To keep pressure off of our local clinics and hospitals. One of the things that happens is, if people cant get access and they really have issues, they’ll flood the emergency department. We still need the emergency department to handle the acute, critical cases,” Wapello County Emergency Management coordinator Tim Richmond told KYOU News.
When the coronavirus was first introduced, the county was having issues with hospital capacity. Multiple Test Iowa sites went up for approximately six weeks at Beach Ottumwa and Evans Middle School to help with the rising coronavirus patients.
“We learned a lot. We learned a great deal. So, we take those lessons and we match it up with what need remains. And then we look at the winter season coming up and say, 'OK, there’s a new way to do this, there’s a new model,'” Richmond told KYOU News. “We don’t have staffing locally that’s why we’re contracting. In order to pay for that, we’re leveraging our CARES dollars to do it. And that’s perfectly acceptable. That’s what it’s for."
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