MADISON, Wis. — One year ago today, the World Health Organization declared the COVID-19 outbreak a pandemic. Many things have changed and evolved over the past 365 days including our testing capabilities.
According to Public Health Madison Dane County’s COVID Response Specialist Sarah Schwartz, testing is now much more widely available to anyone.
“We didn’t have as many people coming through a year ago because there were criteria to come and get tested,” Schwartz said.
When testing first became available, members of the Wisconsin National Guard were administering the tests to those who were experiencing symptoms or believe they were exposed to someone who tested positive for the virus. As time went on, the Guard members trained Public Health staff, EMTs, etc. and testing is now available to anyone.
Charles Link, an EMT now helping administer COVID-19 tests at the Alliant Energy Center Colosseum, said the testing process has become much more efficient.
“We’ve really come a long way,” Link said. “This whole process has been really fine tuned. It’s very efficient.”
Test results that once took up to a week to get back to patients are now being turned around in 24 hours. Wait times to get a COVID test have decreased, now getting people in and out in under an hour.
“Practice makes perfect,” Schwartz said. “The Guard started it, they perfected it, they trained us, we’ve kept it going.”
Schwartz said the Alliant Energy Center now administers around 800-1000 COVID tests per day. That number has remained relatively the same for the last couple of months.
“We hit our record in November on a Tuesday doing 3456 tests,” Schwartz said. “We are obviously not seeing those numbers anymore.”
A lot has changed over the past year and has given people like Schwartz many things to reflect on. Schwartz said hopefully in a year from now, we can reflect on a much different scenario.
“If we still need testing in a year, I’m hoping we can,” Schwartz said. “Hopefully by then, we are also open back up and this will be used for what it was used for before like monster trucks, the circus and whatever else.”
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