LANSING – People from all over the country stopped at Grand Lansing for a COVID-19 test, according to the knowledge of the Sparrow Health System.
Sparrow has conducted approximately 110,000 coronavirus tests since March 16, approximately one week after the first cases were known in Michigan.
While most of these tests referred to central Michigan citizens living in the geographic footprint of the hospital system, thousands were performed for others living in the state, from Detroit to the west of the upper peninsula.
People from 47 states, some as far away as Alaska, Florida, California and Maine, were assessed at The Sparrow’s facility, according to the data.
“This coVID expansion goes far beyond our laboratory footprint,” said James Richard, director of Sparrow Laboratories.
Sparrow monitors the apartments of others going through COVID-19 controls at their control sites or affiliated hospitals, but does not realize if they are going to the particular domain for control.
Richard assumes that many other people from faraway countries were in Lansing when they developed coronavirus symptoms or were informed of exposure and need to be evaluated.
“I would say Array … possibly they would have been exposed here, they would probably have had symptoms and we have this easily accessible.” He said.
A few hours of handling are valuable for a COVID-19 test, especially if the effects return in a day or two, as Sparrow Labs does, and for other people without symptoms, Richard said.
That’s why fitness staff in northern counties proposed that others travel south for testing, said Kate Beer, head of the Department of Health on the Western Upper Peninsula.
The availability of testing is limited in rural areas such as the western Upper Peninsula, he said, and cases are being “triggered” in Gogebic and Ontonagon counties. Health care providers in the region do not have the resources to perform in-depth network testing, and it takes two to three weeks for personal labs to get results.
The time for COVID-19 testing in Michigan is 3.7 days, Department of Health and Human Services spokesman Bob Wheaton said in an email.
Southern Michigan communities, such as Lansing, tend to have more verification sites, adding personal pharmacies that offer COVID-19 controls.
Until Tuesday afternoon, the top of Michigan’s 344 verification sites was in the most populous spaces such as Detroit Metro, Grand Rapids, Flint, and Lansing.
Beer assumed that 3 teams of other people made up of senior citizens who were taking the COVID-19 checks in Lansing: Michigan State University students, travelers who want a check outside the home and others who went to Lansing in particular for the check.
The availability of appliances and response time vary with demand, Richard said.
An influx of new people visited verification sites whenever Governor Gretchen Whitmer expanded opportunities to approve the controls, which were initially limited due to very limited capacity.
The influx also follows epidemics, such as the one known at Harper’s Restaurant and Brewpub in East Lansing this summer, Richard said. He expects a push when students return to Michigan State University for the fall semester.
Access to accurate tests with quick effects is to slow the spread of the virus, he said.
“At the network level, this is vital because you want to be able to identify the presence of a disease in your network so you can evaluate resources, whether in health care and otherwise, to plan,” he said. “That component of the challenge in hospitals from the beginning. We didn’t know how long to wait.”
Contact Carol Thompson at [email protected]. Follow her on Twitter @thompsoncarolk.