Medical centers are experimenting with an ingenious method of testing the coronavirus that minimizes contact, maximizes efficiency and relies on a nearly ubiquitous transportation method: test stations with drive-through windows. To use a foreign term, “drive-through”. A bit like the McDrive, so to speak, but for health purposes.
After all, driveway windows are already used to collect food, coffee, drugs, cash, and even groceries.
Drive-through tests for the coronavirus were introduced for the first time in South Korea. They are becoming an increasingly popular option, with countries like the US, Germany and the UK working to open their own.
Drive-through: because it is safer
“There is less face-to-face contact,” says Lee Jae-joon, mayor of Goyang, a city in northern South Korea. “If you run a testing site indoors, there is a concern that suspected patients could infect each other in the arrival halls, and even in triages set up outside hospitals”.
Drive-through coronavirus testing sites in Seoul, South Korea, have helped the country successfully test hundreds of thousands of people in the country since the outbreak began.
That number is likely to continue to increase. Nearly 20.000 people are now being tested every day in South Korea, according to with the BBC , much more than anywhere else in the world. According to the data collected last weekend , South Korea is running nearly 4 tests for every 1000 people. The US, for comparison, is still stuck at 5 tests per million inhabitants.
One way to speed up the process, in addition to the use of rapid and reliable tests, is to allow people to stay in cars while they are being tested. All patients need to do to undergo the test is to roll down the window and stick out their tongue to receive the swab.
Several states in the US, including Colorado , Connecticut , Hawaii e Washington are joining the trend, setting up their own drive-through testing sites. The University of Washington Medical Center in North Seattle is now able to test 40 to 50 people a day with a drive-through station, according to local news . Drive-through testing sites will be entered with a doctor's note and photo ID. And (for now only in Colorado), testing in the state is “even” free.
