South Bend Clinic tests and screens hundreds for coronavirus

SOUTH BEND, Ind. - Due to several dozen confirmed cases of the coronavirus, including one here in St. Joseph County, the South Bend Clinic started offering screenings and testing’s for residents who were worried they might have the virus.

They have definitely been busy since they started the hotline last week. Kelly Macken-Marble is the CEO of the South Bend Clinic, she said that they had about 400 screenings just over this weekend and tested over 120 patients to date.

Residents can call the hotline, if they have traveled recently or have been in contact with someone who has the virus, shows symptoms, are at the at-risk age range or have underlying conditions.

Then they can officially start the screening process through teleconference or video visits with a physician or nurse.

“We try to do that screening ahead of time. The telehealth visit has been really great for that and in some cases, they have no risk for coronavirus we are able to diagnose and treat something else that might be affecting them,” Macken-Marble said.

If testing makes sense, residents are asked to drive up to the facility and physician will come directly to their vehicle and do the swab right there.

“We’re not sending everybody that just has concerns for testing because testing availability is still a little bit limited so we want to make sure that we’re testing the patients that really have serious risk to contract the infection,” Macken-Marble said.

As of noon Monday they already had 300 people set up to be screened.

Macken-marble says the results take 3 to 5 days. They already have 14 tests come back and they were all negative.

“We have more than 100 tests out though that has not yet resulted and we are at day 4 some of those tests are at day 5 so we’re expecting any time in the next 24, 48 hours we should be getting more results,” she said.