Drive-thru coronavirus testing to start in Athens

Year ago.

New information on efforts to ramp up testing in limestone county!

Tomorrow - athens limestone hospital is offering drive-thru testing.

Waay 31's max cohan spoke with a hospital employee - about why they feel it's now necessary.

"well,we came together as a community and realized that we're seeing an uptick in our cases and to try to take some pressure off of the hospital er and our urgent care, you know they're starting to see a significant amount of patients a day."

Athens limestone hospital director of marketing, felicia lambert says bringing back drive through testing will allow the hospital to take over some of the work of an already busy medical group.

From 8 am to noon on wednesday and thursday, this week and next -- drive through testing will be offered at the athens sportsplex.

Lambert says it's a team effort.

"the city and the county and the ema have all partnered with us and they are taking care of all the logistics which has been a wonderful thing for us and for our community.

We feel like that is a central location and its easy, everyone can stay in their cars and its a drive through so we're hoping it will go fairly quickly and itll be easy on our community to do this."

Lambert said she wasn't sure how many people they have the materials to test but said it would be no issue if 200 showed up on wednesday.

Reporting in athens, max cohan, waay 31 news.

Lambert also added that history shows that this type of event usually draws crowds - but they are prepared to manage traffic.