Coronavirus mobile testing site set up Ripley

Testing just ended at a mobile coronavirus testing site in ripley today.

Several state agencies held the event.

For anyone around ripley that has symptoms of covid 19 testing was free.

Wtva's chelsea brown is live with how the state mobile testing sites are set up.

Here in ripley the national guard and mississippi state department of health workers are starting to pack up the testing site.

To get tested today the patient needed to schedule an appointment.

There are multiple checkpoints a patients had to go through, and i asked earlier what that process is like for someone to get tested here.

Sot- major jason odom- national guard officer in charge "they will meet what we call a traffic control point" that person guided patients through the site and told them where to go.

The patient then stopped again so that workers could verify that person had an appointment.

Christy berry is chief nurse with emergency planning and response with ms department of health, i asked what it is like to work at these testing sites.

Sot- christy berry "this is our job, this is what we do, we are here to protect the public and we are going to do everything in our power to make sure that we do that.

Once workers verified the appointment, then workers tested the patient.

The medics with the national guard did the testing.

Sot- major jason odom "we try and play our part in preventing the spread" patients never had to leave their vehicle.

Major jason odom with the national guard said that he works with the same group of people each time at the different state testing sites.

This was his third mobile testing site with the state department of health.

Sot- major jason odom "so right now we are fortunate to have a good team between the department of health, the guard, and the ummc" the next drive up testing site through the mississippi state department of health will be in eupora thursday, april 9th the next drive up testing site through the mississippi state department of health will be in eupora thursday, april 9th for a complete list of testing sights in our area visit wtva dot com live in ripley, chelsea brown, wtva 9 news a one day mobile testing site will