Lane County ramps up testing for vulnerable populations

The goal is not only to find out who has the virus and catch it early but also to learn more about how it is spreading in the community.

Testing some of the most vulnerable for covid-19 lane county is taking shape.

As kezi 9 news reporter michael sevren shows us people living in places like nursing homes are on the list.

Starting next week residents of long- term care facilities like nursing homes may start getting a visit from lane county public health.

Spokesman jason davis says they'll be testing both residents and caregiver for covid-19 even if they don't have symptoms. sot: phoner the first priority is understand where we need to focus our attention.

It's called sentinel testing.

The goal is not only to find out who has the virus and catch it early, but also understand how the virus is spreading in the community.

Along with nursing homes, davis says they also plan to test members of the latino community.

Stand up davis says they plan to partner with the nonprofit centro latino americano to do testing for the latino population.

He says working with them could make people for more comfortable about getting the test done.

The program is already in it's eary stages at temporary homeless shelters like the one at the lane events center.

There, five people have been tested but they hope to test all of them.

Steven miller has been staying at the shelter.

He hopes others agree to be tested.

Sot: everybody should be tested i hope that they will all cooperate and everybody here and it will be smooth and great and everybody will be negative.

Davis says they hope to have the program there fully rolled out later this week.

He says sentinel testing will help them start to do real public health work.

Sot: phoner real public health work is not staying at home.

Real public health is trying to minimize the impacts to daily life and then put out the hot spots.

Hot spots they hope to catch quickly.

In eugene i'm michael