GREEN BAY (NBC 26) — Local healthcare systems say the demand for COVID testing is increasing, especially among children.
"We've got a significant demand for testing," said Prevea Health President and CEO Dr. Ashok Rai. "As much capacity as we open up it fills very quickly, unfortunately, a lot being younger school-age children needing to be tested because of symptoms."
If you have been exposed or are experiencing symptoms, health experts recommend getting tested within 24 hours to 7 days. Although there is a higher demand for tests, healthcare systems say you should be able to get tested at a local testing site within 24 hours of scheduling your appointment.
"For example, if you live in Green Bay and you try scheduling a test you may get three or four options of places to be tested," Rai said. "It may not be where you normally go, it may be across the river or up the road, but they're usually able to get an appointment within 24 hours at one of our sites that are local to them."
You will usually receive your test results within 2-5 days. If you are experiencing symptoms, you can be given a rapid test which will show your results within 24 hours.
"Rapid antigen testing is really reserved for those people who are exhibiting significant signs of COVID-19," Rai said. "It's generally not the test that we're going to order for anybody that's just coming in for a regular appointment or what we're going to be doing in a community-based testing."
ThedaCare has implemented mobile testing sites as well as car side testing and has been working with the Public Health Department and the Department of Health Services to provide more testing sites to meet the growing demand.
"You can go to the ThedaCare website and actually complete our COVID symptom checker and that will give you direction on whether or not you should possibly do an e-visit with one of our providers who could order a car side test," said Cheryl Becker, Director of Primary Care for the ThedaCare Central Region. "If your symptoms are a little bit more severe, we would recommend that you come into one of our respiratory sites and get tested there."
In order to stop the spread, health experts say it's important to get tested if you are experiencing symptoms or have been exposed and to isolate while you wait for your results.
"Given the level of disease activity we're seeing here in Northeast Wisconsin, there's going to be a lot more people that have the disease and a lot more people that need to be tested so everybody needs to be patient," Rai said. "Until we get control over this most recent surge, delays are going to be there."
