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Beginning today, May 11, 2020, the Wisconsin National Guard opened a Dane County community testing site for COVID-19 (novel coronavirus).

Free, drive-thru and walk-up testing is available to all residents. No appointment is necessary. Depending on utilization, the testing site will be open until further notice. The testing will be conducted in the New Holland Pavilion at the Alliant Energy Center in Madison.  It is open Monday-Saturday, 8:00am – 4:00pm. If you drive up, you will remain in your car the entire time. Using the Exact Sciences test, Wisconsin National Guard staff will collect specimens.

The community testing site is available to all residents.

The test is not an antibody test and does not indicate if someone has had COVID-19 in the past. Results are expected within 3-5 days.

"One of our goals is for every Dane County resident who has symptoms of COVID-19 and those who provide essential services to have access to testing. We also want those who don't have insurance or who lack access to health care to know they can be tested and we are working to ensure they can receive the support and health care they need," said Mayor Satya Rhodes-Conway.​

“Our healthcare system partners have tested thousands of Dane County residents, but because of supply shortages, we know many people with mild systems were told to isolate at home and assume they have COVID-19, without a confirmatory test,” said Janel Heinrich, Director of Public Health Madison & Dane County. 

“A community test site combined with more capacity in health care to test people with mild symptoms will provide us with a more accurate understanding of community spread. We have also been scaling up our capacity for contact tracing at Public Health Madison & Dane County and are ready to follow-up with more individuals who may test positive for COVID-19 to contain community spread,” continued Heinrich.

Increased testing capacity is one of the criteria outlined in Wisconsin’s Badger Bounce Back plan for the phased re-opening of Wisconsin.  Fewer cases as a percentage of all tests over 14 days is another criterion in the plan, but because we are testing more people in Dane County, we expect our case counts to increase over the next few weeks. This does not mean spread of the virus has gotten worse in Dane County.

“In addition to community testing, we are working to ensure adequate personal protective equipment, health care capacity, and contact tracing infrastructure in Dane County. These strategies together put us on a path to reopening Dane County as soon as possible,” said County Executive Parisi.

For more information and answers to questions about the community testing site, visit publichealthmdc.com/coronavirustesting.

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Health & Safety
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COVID-19