As of last week, COVID-19 cases across the U.S. were down 53.1% from their peak Jan. 15, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The Joplin Health Department reported 62 new cases Monday compared with 113 cases Jan. 31.
Missouri residents scrambled to receive COVID-19 testing services last month, with sites were running out of tests within only a few hours and cars were lined up for blocks. Additional testing sites have opened up since the January surge. That includes a new location in Cherokee County, Kansas.
Ivy Medical
Ivy Medical announced Tuesday that it opened a free walk-up/drive-thru testing site at 217 W. Seventh St. in Galena, Kansas, in response to the omicron variant. The site offers rapid antigen and PCR testing from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday through Saturday. No appointment or health insurance is required.
“We know how hard it has been for families, students, and workers to get any COVID-19 test, let alone a free one,” Tristan Steele, CEO of Ivy Medical, said in a statement.
Rapid antigen test results are available within two hours, and PCR test results typically take 24 to 72 hours. Due to federal regulations, Ivy Medical may not discuss test results over the phone, and patients will receive their results electronically.
The group also operates a COVID-19 testing site at 115 N. Madison St. in Webb City. Sami Johnson, Ivy Medical’s human resources director, said that the group is in conversations with other cities nationwide about opening new sites.
“Aside from getting vaccinated and boosted, testing is the best tool we have in the fight against COVID-19,” she said. “Vaccines are highly effective at preventing severe illness and death, but the omicron variant is extremely contagious.”
The demand for testing at the Webb City location remained high in January. It averaged about 200 tests daily. Johnson said requests for testing have gone down this month, most likely due to the winter weather.
The Webb City site had closed Wednesday through Friday last week because of dangerous travel conditions. Johnson also said positivity rates at Ivy Medical sites continue to decrease with some of the sites seeing a positivity rate of 20%. However, officials believe testing may ramp up again as temperatures rise to the 50s and 60s this week.
Seeds of Hope
Seeds of Hope Staffing Agency, based in Carthage, has five testing sites open in Jasper, Newton and McDonald counties and is working to open up a sixth site in a community center in Granby next week.
The agency offers free PCR tests that can detect the presence of the virus that causes COVID-19. No preregistration or appointment is needed. Seeds of Hope testing sites are located in Joplin, Webb City, Carthage, Neosho and Pineville.
Julie Hawkins, owner of Seeds of Hope, said the agency administered nearly 7,000 tests total among its five locations in January. There’s an average of anywhere from 80 to 150 people per day at the Joplin location.
“Due to the weather, we have slowed down, but the need for testing is still strong,” Hawkins said. “We had to close down for a couple of days because of the weather, but when we opened, people were coming right back to be tested.”
Out of the thousands of people who have been tested with Seeds of Hope, 30% to 40% have tested positive for COVID-19, according to Hawkins. Test results are emailed to the client within 24 to 48 hours.
“We just want to be available to the community to help them with testing, and it keeps them from going into the hospital for testing where they could possibly infect other people,” Hawkins said. “They can just drive up in the drive-thru, and we come to them. We do expect to see an increase in people once the weather warms back up, but it’s day to day.”
NextGen Diagnostic Services
NextGen Diagnostic Services, a certified mobile laboratory that provides molecular and antigen testing, has been providing COVID-19 testing services in Joplin and throughout Missouri.
Antigen testing can produce results in approximately 15 minutes. NextGen also provides antibody tests, which identify antibodies in the immune system that are produced as a result of the coronavirus.
The group was offered a renewable contract by the Missouri Department of Health and Seniors Services in April 2021 to conduct mobile COVID-19 testing across the state.
The Joplin-based mobile lab was created by owner and lab director Nanda Nunnelly, who established the service during the delta variant wave in November 2020. Nunnelly said the lab is also seeing fewer requests for COVID-19 testing, which she takes as a good sign.
NextGen Diagnostics offered free COVID-19 testing in Springfield about two weeks ago where it administered tests to nearly 400 people daily. That number dwindled to 200 people daily the following week. It was the same case in St. Louis, Nunnelly said.
“A couple weeks ago, we were in St. Louis testing around 500 people a day,” she said. “Now, we’re seeing about 100 people a day.”
Nunnelly said the need for COVID-19 testing has only increased more and more with each variant that emerges. She agrees with Springfield health care leaders who believe that the region has reached its omicron peak.
Other sites
Freeman Health System and Mercy Hospital Joplin officials said they’ve also seen fewer people seeking COVID-19 testing over the last two weeks.
Jessica Liberty, Freeman’s infection prevention and control manager, said Tuesday that Freeman has seen at least a 70% reduction in COVID-19 testing compared with January.
“Testing has definitely waned in the last 10 days, the weather being one of the contributing factors, but even during this week our testing has remained reduced,” she said. “We closed our testing site last Thursday, the third, so that obviously reduced our numbers. We did see a reduction on Wednesday and Friday, but not as much as I thought we would. Our testing has leveled out this week to about 30 patients daily. We were testing 100 daily during peak week last month.”
Mercy Hospital Joplin, which offers COVID-19 testing only to people with a referral, also reported a significant drop in the number of testing requests at its clinics compared with last month. Jordan Larimore, spokesperson for Mercy Hospital Joplin, said the clinics had tested about 20 people daily in mid-January, which tapered off to one to five people daily early last week.
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