New COVID-19 drive-thru testing site opens in Kenosha

KENOSHA COUNTY, Wis. (CBS 58) -- A new drive-thru COVID-19 testing site is now open in Kenosha County.

"We have seen a desperate need for more testing in Kenosha County,” Dr. Jen Freiheit, Kenosha County Division of Health Director, said.

The drive-thru is located in a parking lot outside of Gateway Technical College’s Kenosha Campus.

It's being run by The Kenosha Community Health Center, The Kenosha County Division of Health and Gateway.  

This drive-thru site is not open to the public and the person must be showing symptoms, but they can be mild.

"It is only open to household contacts and close contacts to someone who has tested positive,” Dr. Freiheit said. “They will now have a way to get tested through a referral through the health department.”

As of Wednesday afternoon, there were 370 confirmed cases of COVID-19 in Kenosha. Ten people have died.

“We’re seeing still a great increase in positives,” Dr. Freiheit said. “We’re getting about 10-15 new positives a day in Kenosha County.”

Dr. Freiheit said so far just over 1% of the county’s population has been tested. The new drive-thru site will allow for more people to be tested.

“We’re prepared to do up to 50 tests per day initially,” Dr. Mary Ouimet, Kenosha Community Health Center Chief Executive Officer, said. “As the needs evolve, were going to be prepared to ramp up accordingly.”

Dr. Freiheit is confident more testing will help stop the spread of COVID-19 in Kenosha.

“It allows us to know who is positive, who is not,” she said. “We can look for hot spots within the county, we can do our contact tracing, our disease investigation, and be able to contain it much quicker that way.”