Pop-Up COVID-19 Testing at Muskingum County Fairgrounds

ZANESVILLE, OH – A Pop-Up COVID-19 Testing Site was at the Muskingum County Fairgrounds today. They opened up at 9:30 this morning and ran until 3:30 in the afternoon.

The Joint Unified Command is in charge of the organization locally and they partnered with the Ohio National Guard for the swabbing. Health Commissioner Corey Hamilton shares why they decided to host a pop-up testing site.

“We were seeing a really high volume of testing running through Genesis First Care, and the Emergency Department, Hometown Urgent Care, Shrivers Pharmacy, our testing sites here in the county. And it seemed like people were desiring to be tested more frequently and so we brought this event in to take some of the strain off of those testing sites.”

The swab samples from today’s tests will be sent to Mako Labs and results will be available within 48 to 72 hours. Hamilton goes on to explain the importance of getting tested for COVID-19.

“We think testing is an important part of the strategy to control the spread of the disease. We know that there’s a significant number of individuals that are asymptomatic and while they may not have symptoms they can still be capable of spreading the disease and other people could then get more ill from it. So that’s why we’d like to have as many people tested as we possibly can.”

Hamilton asks the public to continue following Safe Ohio Protocols to continue to decrease the amount of COVID-19 hospitalizations.