Andrea Davila, a nurse at the Kaiser Permanente North Lancaster clinic administers a test for COVID-19 at the clinic’s drive-thru testing site on Wednesday, April 29. (Amanda Loman/Salem Reporter)
Salem Health is using a grant to ramp up local testing for COVID-19, buying equipment that will allow the health provider to process tests in its in-house laboratory.
A $1.25 million grant from Springfield, Oregon-based PacificSource will go toward the purchase of supplies so the health provider can run tests at its Salem lab, rather than shipping swabs elsewhere for testing.
The effort to increase testing comes as Marion County Marion County commissioners push to re-open some businesses.
Increasing the number of COVID-19 tests being done locally is key to that plan. Marion County has for weeks had the highest rate of known COVID-19 cases in Oregon, and more widespread testing will give public health workers a better picture of how the virus is spreading.
Salem Health said in a news release the increased capacity will allow them to test more people in areas hit hard by the virus like Woodburn.
“We know there are limited local resources for testing. The community needs more testing solutions, and Salem Health staff found a path for improving our capacity to do that,” said Cheryl Nester Wolfe, president and CEO of Salem Health, in a news release. “This partnership will deliver substantial improvement. Local testing means better and faster results for community members in need.”
The health provider began testing for COVID-19 at clinics in south Salem, Woodburn and Dallas on March 16, then paused testing on March 25 due to a supply shortage. The clinics resumed on April 1 and had tested over 1,000 residents for the virus by late April, spokesman Elijah Penner said in an email.
Most of those tests are processed at private labs or the Oregon State Public Health Laboratory. Salem Health was working to set up in-house testing by the end of April, but had not yet begun processing their own tests, Penner said.
“This will substantially increase the volume of tests Salem Health Laboratories can run, and will provide results much more quickly. In the long-term, this new technology diversifies the capacity to test, protecting the community from a pause in testing if we were dependent on only one method,” Penner said in an email.
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Contact reporter Rachel Alexander: [email protected] or 503-575-1241.
Rachel Alexander is Salem Reporter’s managing editor. She joined Salem Reporter when it was founded in 2018 and covers city news, education, nonprofits and a little bit of everything else. She’s been a journalist in Oregon and Washington for a decade. Outside of work, she’s a skater and board member with Salem’s Cherry City Roller Derby and can often be found with her nose buried in a book.
