Moniteau County Fairgrounds hosts COVID-19 community testing

A member of the Missouri National Guard speaks with a community member at the Department of Health and Senior Services' community coronavirus testing event Wednesday, Nov. 4, 2020.
A member of the Missouri National Guard speaks with a community member at the Department of Health and Senior Services' community coronavirus testing event Wednesday, Nov. 4, 2020.

The Moniteau County Fairgrounds hosted a busy day of community COVID-19 testing Wednesday.

The Missouri National Guard and Department of Health and Senior Services partnered to hold the event from 9 a.m.-2 p.m.

This is the second time a DHSS testing event has taken place in Moniteau County this year, the first having occurred in July when active COVID-19 case count in the county was significantly lower.

Sgt. Zachary Weeks with the Missouri National Guard said the day started with 160 registered for testing, and workers on site had the capacity to administer up to 250 tests.

With around an hour to go before the end of the event, Weeks said things had been running smoothly.

"We have two lines set up, our unregistered line and our registered line," Weeks said. "Right now, since we haven't been getting many unregistered people in, we've been using both lines to move people through as fast as we can."

A line of cars was looped around the back of the fairgrounds administrative building at around 1 p.m. Wednesday. Weeks said the event stayed consistently busy throughout much of the day.

At one point in the morning, it was busy enough that the line of vehicles waiting to be tested extended back around to where people were exiting the area of the fairgrounds in which testing was taking place - a good sign, Weeks said.

It can take an average of 48-72 hours - sometimes up to days - after the test has been administered for results to be reported, Weeks said.

As of 2:20 p.m. Wednesday afternoon, Moniteau County's active COVID-19 case count sits at 141. The county's total number of COVID-19 cases since the start of the pandemic is now 875.