PARMA, Ohio — On Friday, Cuyahoga County Executive Armond Budish announced the county has pledged $5 million to the Cuyahoga County Board of Health for 30,000 COVID-19 tests.
“We cannot stop the pandemic if we do not know who is infected," Budish said. "Testing is how we will unlock the coronavirus puzzle. This is how we will defeat it.”
Budish said the lack of access to testing is dangerous, especially for people living in group settings. The new testing plan is focused on those people to help quickly identify infections and slow the spread of the virus.
Testing will be conducted by MetroHealth Medical Center in guidance with the board of health.
“The tests will be used to determine if people are currently infected and will focus on priority groups in the county including hot spots or clusters detected by the County Board of Health, as well as congregate facilities such as homeless shelters, community health centers,” Budish said.
Much of the testing will be focused on those living in congregate group settings, the elderly and those with underlying health conditions.
County health commissioner Terry Allan said MetroHealth's support will help officials test a wider range of those people deemed at-risk.
“The idea here is that if you have staff in congregate facilities that then become exposed and COVID positive, they then potentially circulate out into the community into their homes, into grocery stores into other places where they may work and begin to spread and create new chains of transmission that cause further cases and fatalities. This is what we're trying to prevent," Allan said.
The plan has been in the works for several weeks, according to county medical director Dr. Heidi Gullett. Officials were waiting for more testing kits to become available.
She said it's an expansion of the work they've already been doing with MetroHealth at different facilities with the limited testing kits they had.
“Which is just exciting that we can get so many more places...and be more proactive rather than just reactive. In the past, when we had a few swabs, we were mostly doing places where we thought there was really infection already," Gullett said.
During Friday’s briefing, MetrtoHealth Medical Center CEO Akram Boutros said the hospital is ramping up testing equipment supplies with the goal to test up to 2,000 people per day.
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