Carmel Mayor Jim Brainard announced Friday that the City of Carmel will begin coordinating COVID-19 testing at local assisted living facilities and nursing homes through Aria Diagnostics, a local lab, which has the ability to test large numbers of people quickly.
The tests are the same tests authorized by the CDC and can be repeated on a periodic basis. Two days ago, the City of Carmel began testing, in conjunction with Aria, all first responders and now all city employees.
Brainard
“After consulting with medical practitioners and area hospital administrators about how to best use expanded testing capacity, it was recommended that we test nursing homes and assisted living facility staff. If a resident has already been identified as having the virus, then all the residents in that facility should be tested,” Brainard said. “We are fortunate to have a local entrepreneur who has quickly converted his business to perform large numbers of these much-needed tests.
Brainard continued, “Our residents in nursing homes and assisted living homes are the most vulnerable citizens to COVID-19 and that is why we want to move quickly to help coordinate testing of their staff and residents. If this is done quickly it will save lives. Our goal is to stop the spread of the virus so that we can avoid overwhelming our health care workers and hospitals and give the scientific community time to develop treatments and eventually a vaccine.”
The City is not paying for these tests for the private facilities, but there should be reimbursement under various federal laws for testing that is done.
Stay on top of all the updates regarding COVID-19 at carmel.in.gov.