Wisconsin National Guard Conducts Shortened COVID-19 Testing Week

Press release from Wisconsin National Guard Public Affairs:

Dec. 30, 2020

Wisconsin National Guard specimen collection teams will gather COVID-19 specimens Monday through Wednesday this week due to the New Year's holiday.

Teams have collected a cumulative total of nearly 990,000 specimens at community-based testing sites and institutional-based testing missions.

The Wisconsin National Guard’s collection activities support the Wisconsin Department of Health Service’s efforts to expand COVID-19 testing throughout the entire state. The teams, which are tailorable to meet the needs of a specific facility or community, are dispatched from a larger task force of several hundred Citizen Soldiers and Airmen.

They have established mobile testing sites since early April at locations ranging from correctional facilities, health clinics and institutional facilities, to private businesses, senior-living facilities, and community-based testing sites. Most community-based testing sites across the state are conducted on a regularly scheduled basis.

All visitors seeking a test at these sites are urged to contact their local health department for more information about a particular testing day. The Wisconsin National Guard will not conduct testing Dec. 31-Jan. 3 and full testing operations resume Jan. 4.

Those seeking a test at a Wisconsin National Guard community-based specimen collection site are urged to register online in advance using the Dynamics Testing and Registration Application (DTRA) program, which is also known as COVID Connect.

After collecting the specimens at each site, the test kits are sent to a lab for analysis, and individual citizens receive their results via an email or a phone call from their local health department or a state call center within three-to-seven days following the test. Wisconsin National Guard specimen collection sites operating the week of Dec. 28-Jan. 3 along with cumulative testing site totals are listed below.

Additional information on these testing sites and others is available at the Wisconsin Department of Health Services website.

This press release was produced by Wisconsin National Guard Public Affairs. The views expressed here are the author's own.