APPLETON (NBC 26) — It’s the week following the Christmas holiday, and amid a surge of COVID cases nationwide fueled by the Omicron variant, health officials are urging folks to get vaccinated or boosted.
Area officials are also urging folks to take preventative measures and get tested following the Christmas gatherings.
Locally, RX Link Pharmacy in Appleton has been providing COVID testing and vaccinations since Sunday.
In Oshkosh, the Winnebago County Health Department is also providing testing all week at the Sunnyview Expo Center.
If you’re looking for more locations to get tested for COVID-19 you can click here for more information.
As U.S. hospitals are short staffed and also continue to feel the impact, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has issued a new guidance.
For healthcare workers who don’t have symptoms they can now reduce their quarantine from ten to seven days with a negative test.
Click here to read more.
Local health officials also ask people to be patient if there are wait times at testing sites or delays in receiving test results.
Health officials at Bellin Health say they've also been seeing a demand following the holiday.
"The increase in demand is at all of our testing locations,” said Jill Spejcher, Bellin Health Team Leader of Clinical Operations. "Our drive thru location here in Green Bay being the most popular or requested site. We are also receiving a lot of calls through our hotline.”
Spejcher said about 50 percent of their appointments were pre-booked with requests that came in through the weekend.
The rest of them were from phone calls they received on Monday.
"With the demand our access is not as great as we would love it to be, so it may take about a day or so to get in if you weren't able to get an appointment today. But we are working as hard as we can to increase access to make sure anyone who wants a test can get it,” Spejcher said.
And just a few miles away in Appleton, the owner at RX Link Pharmacy says they had people lining up Monday morning to get tested.
"Right after the holiday, this morning we were quite busy. People were coming in and requesting tests. Some of them are kind of huge families because they feel that they want to take the test,” said Jude Jean-Pierre, pharmacist and the owner of Rx Link.
So who all are the people waiting in line to get tested?
"We're seeing a smattering of testing whether for travel, of they need to get back to school, of they've been exposed or now they have symptoms,” Spejcher said.
In the meantime, officials say take home COVID tests are also good to have a piece of mind.
However, experts say they may not always be accurate so it’s important you follow the instructions correctly on how to administer the test.
