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Wait Times For COVID Tests Are Soaring, So Nashville Is Ramping Back Up

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Meharry testing site
Stephen JerkinsWPLN News (File)
Meharry Medical College has been staffing testing sites throughout the pandemic, including a site that has now closed on its campus. The only public testing site in Davidson County is currently at an old K-Mart site on Murfreesboro Pike, though the Metro Public Health Department has regular pop-up events each day.
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Nashville’s public COVID testing site has been forced to expand this week to meet the increased demand caused by the delta variant surge.

The one remaining testing site in the parking lot of an old K-Mart on Murfreesboro Pike has expanded to eight lanes after weeks of operating one lane of traffic for vaccinations and one for testing.

But in recent days, wait times have been excessive.

“I think we probably got up as much as three hours,” says Shannon Roberson of Meharry Medical College, which staffs the site. “And we had to turn some away.”

With the expansion, Roberson says the longest wait was about 45 minutes on Wednesday. By 8:30 a.m., the site had already tested 300 people.

The city is scouting sites to open another testing center if demand continues to grow. Already, testing is yielding larger numbers of positive cases, averaging nearly 500 a day with positivity rates of 14%.

But Roberson says staffing is increasingly becoming a challenge, since many of the people who worked earlier in the pandemic have gone back to their former jobs as businesses return to full-strength.

Meharry is running into its own delta variant issues. Roberson says several people working the site have tested positive with breakthrough COVID case and have to go home. To top it off, people are also starting to line up at the site for their COVID booster shot, now recommended for high-risk patients by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

“Bam,” Roberson says. “All of the sudden, it just slapped us in the face.”

Roberson, who is usually managing corporate compliance, says Meharry can call on students and campus staff, though that means they would still have to complete their day jobs after the site closes each afternoon.

Blake Farmer, Host, This Is Nashville

Blake Farmer is the host of “This Is Nashville,” the flagship weekday show of Nashville Public Radio. Previously, Blake spent 16 years at WPLN News, serving as host, editor and news director. Before a two-year radio hiatus with a Nashville-based healthcare company, Blake was one of the country’s most prolific healthcare audio journalists. He produced stories for both local and national programs, extending the reach of his reporting through a partnership with KFF Health News. Outside of work, Blake can be found running or biking on roads that other Nashvillians consider too busy for such activities. So far, he has always made it home to his wife of 20 years and two children.

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