Established patients of Mayo Clinic can now get drive-thru testing for COVID-19 at the Jacksonville campus, where a new lab is expected to be able to process more than 1,000 tests a day gathered from Mayo and other regional medical centers.
A conference room at Mayo was quickly turned into a laboratory as the novel coronavirus pandemic grew.
“In the days and weeks to come, we will be working closely with other health care institutions in the region to assist in processing some of their test samples and significantly increase the overall volume of COVID-19 testing done,” Kent Thielen, CEO of Mayo in Florida, said Tuesday morning.
Testing will take place from 8 a.m. to 2 p.m. daily. To qualify, patients need to be an established Mayo patient and be screened first by a Mayo provider to see if they meet testing guidelines.
The hospital said patients should call their provider and that most screenings for possible symptoms will take place over the phone.
Results are expected within 24 hours.
U.S. efforts to identify those infected by the coronavirus have been held back by a lack of available tests. Mayo joined other academic and commercial labs in trying to fill that gap.
