01 Apr COVID-19 Test Results: Notification Process Explained
Frequently Asked Questions about the local response to coronavirus.
If you still have questions or need assistance, visit the County’s COVID-19 Response site or call their hotline for non-medical questions: 970-728-3844.
If you have a medical question, or need non-urgent health care, call the medical center: 970.728.3848.
If you have a question Sharon Grundy has not answered, send your question here, and she will do her best to answer and add that response to this post on tellmed.org/coronavirus.
On March 31, the San Miguel Department of Public Health and Environment announced notification procedures for the county-wide COVID-19 blood antibody testing are underway.
Thousands of blood samples are being flown to a lab in the New York area one-to-three days after being collected. What follows is a 48-72 hour process before results become available.
Lab tests are supervised by a scientist with UBI who advised there may be some delay due to the area being especially hard hit by COVID-19.
County Public Health officials will immediately notify individuals by phone with positive results and explain recommended actions, including a possible PCR swab test to test for active disease.
Those who test negative on the first blood draw will be notified by email, pending legal approval of the method: HIPAA regulations have slightly loosened because of the COVID-19 pandemic. Those individuals who did not supply or do not have an email account will be notified by letter to the mailing address they provided upon registering.
Phone calls to individuals who test negative will only be done if no other method of contact is available.
Notification of results will be made public after those with positive results have been reached.
The second round of blood tests will be in April at least 14 days after the first test, in the same locations, and with a similar structure.
(*Note: first responders and their families will be asked to register online at c19smc.com BUT NOT UNTIL Saturday, April 4th for data processing reasons.)
Notification of the second test results will be the same. The notification process is subject to change if necessary.
Please do not call the hotline or your healthcare provider looking for your results.
“We understand the public’s desire to know their results,” Public Health Director Grace Franklin said. “We are doing everything we can to get the results and release them as soon as reasonably possible.
Meantime, public health wants to remind people to stay the course:
“None of these results will matter if we are not following the stay-at-home orders and physical distancing practices,” County Medical Officer, Dr. Sharon Grundy said.
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