BUFFALO, N.Y. — As testing resources become more available, Kaleida Health has decided to make a change in who is eligible to be tested for COVID-19.
Leaders at the hospital network tell 2 On Your Side they plan on offering COVID-19 testing to anyone who shows symptoms and has a prescription from their doctor.
Up until now, only essential workers who showed symptoms and had a prescription were eligible for COVID-19 testing in Western New York.
“We now have the capacity to go ahead and offer that to community and physicians and providers in the community," said Dr. David Hughes, chief medical officer for the hospital corporation.
Hughes says Kaleida's laboratory is now running around the clock, capable of processing 500 tests daily.
For weeks, Erie County had lagged behind other upstate counties in coronavirus testing. Only recently, had that testing picture begun to change.
But while Kaleida was seeking kits and reagents for a half-dozen different COVID-19 tests, it was busy training its lab technicians the methodology of those different testing platforms.
Now, says Hughes, they have both supply and capacity, enough to process 500 specimens daily.
How long can Kaleida keep up this pace of testing it has built up?
“We think we can sustain it into the foreseeable future at this point,” says Hughes.
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