LOUISVILLE, Ky. (WDRB) -- With COVID-19 cases on the rise across the country, testing sites in the Louisville area are once again seeing long lines of people waiting to be tested.
Bluewater Diagnostics Laboratory in Mt. Washington has testing sites across the area, and the post-holiday surge in cases has led to numbers similar to the start of the pandemic.
"There's definitely an emphasis on testing right now," said Alonzo Shepherd, a molecular supervisor at Bluewater.
Shepherd said they're doing thousands of COVID-19 tests a day.
"We started to see an uptick around Christmas this year," he said. "We were around about 500 samples, then we jumped up to about 1,500, 2,000, and now we're back up to that 3,000 range as the New Year hit us."
Once the samples are collected, they're placed in a tube and transported to the lab.
"Then our team of accessioners are going to go through them," Shepherd said. "They're going to verify the name, the date of birth on the tube, make sure we've received the proper tube and that it's the proper condition."
The samples are then processed to determine who's negative or positive for COVID-19. Turnaround time is typically 24 hours but can take longer for some smaller labs.
"Most samples, when they get into the lab, are going to be released the same day," Shepherd said. "So if you get a sample in on the 5th, you should have results by end of day 5th."
Dr. Erik Korte, lab director at Bluewater, said the omicron variant is less lethal than delta, but it's still spreading despite vaccinations.
"Omicron is incredibly infectious," Korte said. "The number of positives that we are seeing is unreal. Our positivity rate is between 20-25%."
Korte said since Christmas, they've seen a significant daily increase in positive COVID-19 cases.
"So the week after Christmas, I ended up sending 365," he said. "On Monday, 538. On Tuesday and Wednesday, 737, I believe."
Korte said he sent more than 1,000 positive COVID cases to the state this Tuesday.
He said if you can't make it to one of the testing sites, the at-home tests are a good alternative.
"Rapid tests are very, very good," Korte said. "If you need to know something quickly, if you want to know if you should take your entire family and get them tested for PCR, having a rapid test at home to test the most symptomatic person in your house, it's very important to get results in 15 minutes. They're usually very easy to run. So there's nothing at all wrong with that."
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