COVID-19 testing is now available for all adults at Peoria's three community-based testing sites beginning Friday - even if they don't have any symptoms of the virus. Dr. Gregg Stoner is chief medical officer of Heartland Health Services.
"When you look at Governor Pritzker's stages of development in opening the state, that is one of the stages that has to be achieved to get to level three. And that is opening testing up to all individuals," he said.
Stoner said Heartland has "a couple thousand" extra tests available.
"It's hard to know exactly what the demand is going to be, but it does look like we have enough material to do the testing right now. It's something we've wanted to do all the time, since this whole crisis began, is test as many people as possible," Stoner said.
All symptomatic adults were able to get tested until Thursday. When the sites were first rolled out more than two weeks ago, several criteria restricted who could receive a nasal swab test in an effort to preserve supplies.
When the East Bluff test site first opened on April 27, most or all of the daily 150 test allotment was used up by mid-afternoon. But on Thursday, just 12 tests were conducted at Carver, and 89 at the East Bluff site. 300 tests are available on weekdays in Peoria.
There are 199 confirmed COVID-19 cases in Peoria, Tazewell, and Woodford counties.
The Carver and East Bluff test sites are open 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. on weekdays. The health department's test site is open 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. on weekends. Stoner said an announcement about a Pekin testing site are forthcoming.
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