LEWISBURG, Pa. — A steady stream of vehicles moved through the COVID-19 testing site at St. Mary and 15th Streets near Lewisburg.
"Up until this point, we were able to handle the demands of the community through our urgent care and emergency department, but most recently with the community spread, it started to create some excessive wait times," said Angela Lahr, vice president of clinical operations for Evangelical Community Hospital.
Evangelical Community Hospital is seeing a surge in COVID-19 cases, and in turn, higher demand for testing. Nearly 50 people were tested at this site on Monday.
"We tested up to 400 patients a day at the height of this back in November to January. I was hopeful that we wouldn't have to go down this path again as everyone was. But we are here for the community to help mitigate that spread," said Andrew Zechman, Evangelical Community Hospital COVID testing operational lead.
The testing site will be open Monday through Friday from 7 a.m. to 11 a.m. Anyone can come. Hospital officials say it will stay open as long as it is needed.
"We're going to watch the community spread, and when the community spread starts to go down and when the positivity rate goes down, we will walk through the same process that we did in June and start to decrease the hours at the site, and eventually close the site," Lahr explained.
Hospital officials say the best protection against COVID-19 is still the vaccine.
"We certainly have our vaccination clinics," Zechman said. "If you haven't been vaccinated, please consider doing such."