Reynolds visits newest Test Iowa site in Osage

OSAGE — Governor Kim Reynolds this morning toured the state’s newest Test Iowa site in Osage. Reynolds says the state wants to make sure that rural areas have the same access to testing as there is in the state’s larger cities. 

“I’m just so appreciative of the local public health, the hospital, the EMA, the collaboration that’s taking place locally to really serve the citizens in this area. It’s my understanding they were driving down to Waterloo, that was the closest site. It’s really think it’s a testament to your local officials and your local public health, and the EMA that have stepped up to provide this service, and hospitals, so it’s just phenomenal,” she says. 

Reynolds commended the local partnership in Mitchell County to help operate the test site, saying it continues a trend of good coordination between state and local health officials during the pandemic.  “Unprecedented collaboration, just with the state and local officials, and how important that has been. Then just to get the hospitals coordinating and working together too so we could understand the number of ICU beds that we have, the number of ventilators, so that we could be prepared in case we did see a surge in COVID cases. They did a great job of really helping us identify what those numbers were, what their surge plans were, and how we would be very proactive in addressing COVID-19.”

Reynolds says she wants to continue to see the Test Iowa program scaled up, especially in rural parts of the state.   “We have right now ten Test Iowa drive thru sites. We kind of look at what some of the virus activity looks like and that determines where it makes sense for a Test Iowa site to go to.  We were in Buena Vista, and we were in Sioux County, and Marshalltown, and Pottawattamie, so probably in some of our larger communities they will stay there, but this makes more sense in a lot of our rural Iowa areas, and so this is how we can provide those necessary services.”

The Osage Test Iowa site is located at the Mitchell County Fairgrounds. For more information and to take the Test Iowa assessment if you think you might need to get tested, head to testiowa.com.