MARSHALL, Mo. — Over the next two days, the parking lot at the Saline County Health Department will be filled with residents being tested for COVID-19.
The county is considered a hotspot for the virus, but only because there has been an increased demand for testing.
Fitzgibbon Hospital on Highway 65 has administered more than 1,700 tests for COVID-19.
"It’s a lot for a small hospital," Callie Post, director of critical care at Fitzgibbon Hospital, said.
The patients keep coming from Saline County and surrounding communities.
"We have helped calm them, we swab them if they feel they need to be seen in our emergency room, then we take them right in,” Post said.
The hospital is providing curbside testing 24 hours per day, seven days a week.
Demand for those tests surged when COVID-19 hit the Cargill and Conagra plants in town.
"When we first became aware that there were cases in those plants and ramped up our testing, we saw almost 700 folks get tested over the course of three or four days here," Angy Littrell, president and chief executive officer of Fitzgibbon Hospita, said.
While Cargill has not shut down during the outbreak, Conagra remained Monday closed after more than 40 employees tested positive.
The company, according to a Conagra spokesperson, intends to start operations again on May 3.
Dan Hare, senior director of communication and external relations at Conagra Brands, wrote in a statement to 41 Action News that, in the meantime, they are "working with employees to get tested before they return to work as a way to reduce the spread of the virus in the facility.”
Tara Brewer, Saline County Health Department administrator, said that the facilities present “another obstacle that we have to deal with.”
"Not that anyone else doesn't,” she said, “but every factory, every business, has been great to work with here. And we probably speak to the factories or some businesses as far as it goes once a day.”
With testing a priority, the health department will collect swab samples from 400 residents between Tuesday and Wednesday outside their offices located at 1825 Atchison Avenue.
The community testing is similar to those that began Monday in Kansas City, Missouri.
Saline County residents interested in getting tested do not need to show symptoms but need to register ahead.
"As a community we're just trying to stay on the same page,” Brewer said. “That's the biggest thing because we are so rural. We definitely want everyone here in Saline County to be on the same page as much as we can.”
