New Orleans wants to increase the focus on testing residents for COVID-19, especially in neighborhoods where they fell there has been a lack of testing.
While New Orleans health officials say new cases and even deaths from COVID-19 are on the decline, they want to expand testing to make sure.
Drive-through testing helped get a lot of residents screened, said New Orleans Health Department leader Dr. Jennifer Avegno, but now the city is taking testing to various neighborhoods for walk-ups.
"Virus testing, as the mayor said, has been and will continue to be a top priority for us at is in national and state guidelines to thinking about easing restrictions," Dr. Avegno said. "In order to safely do that, we need to test four to five percent of our population each month, and for New Orleans, that's about 500 to 600 tests every day."
Dr. Jennifer Avegno says they want to target under-served communities with nearby walk-up test sites, and the city is hiring translators fluent in Spanish and Vietnamese to help.
In addition to testing, health officials need to be able to track down contacts made by people who test positive for COVID-19.
