LYNN — Lynn Community Health Center will begin to offer walk-through coronavirus testing for its patients on Tuesday.
The outdoor clinic will be set up in a tent at the Element Care parking lot at 9 Buffum St., located across the street from the health center’s main site on Union Street.
Dr. Geoff Pechinsky, Lynn Community Health Center chief medical officer, said healthcare workers will be able test up to 100 patients per day at the downtown clinic with test kits that are being provided by North Shore Medical Center.
The service will only be available for current LCHC patients, who need both a referral and an appointment to be tested at the clinic. Only those who exhibit COVID-19 symptoms will be tested.
Patients can walk up to the tent to get tested, and the results will be sent electronically to their medical provider within one to two days. The provider will then call the patient to share their test results.
“It’s something we’ve been wanting to do for awhile,” said Pechinsky. “It hinged on the testing. We have the staff. Knowing that we have that steady supply of tests, it’s absolutely exciting. I think the next step after that is: how do we increase testing even further? How do we do the follow-up with people who have tested positive and do the contract tracing from there?”
As volume increases and the clinic’s operation is stabilized, Pechinsky is hopeful testing availability at the site will expand to other city residents. There are simply not enough test kits available to make the clinic available to all residents right now, he said.
Currently, the health center operates a separate clinic for patients with COVID-19 symptoms who need to be evaluated in person by a medical provider, but much like what the rest of the country has encountered, testing availability has been an issue
Two weeks ago, LCHC was only able to test 10-20 patients a day, but since then numbers have increased to about 50-60 per day. Between the center’s two clinics, Pechinsky anticipates that testing capacity will double in the coming weeks.
The walk-through clinic will be open on weekdays from 9 a.m. to noon, and 1-5 p.m, but the goal is for it to become a seven-day-a-week operation. In addition, Pechinsky said the health center is exploring ways to include a drive-through option at the clinic, which is already available at the Union Hospital site on Lynnfield Street.
To balance demand, Pechinsky said patients with cars, such as health center employees and first responders, are being referred to Union’s clinic, while the LCHC walk-through site is catering to those who lack their own vehicle.
North Shore Medical Center is working closely with LCHC and the City of Lynn to provide outreach and education to low-income and immigrant communities who have been hardest hit by the COVID-19 pandemic.
“As we know, the COVID-19 pandemic hits vulnerable communities hardest,” said Dr. Kiame Mahaniah, CEO of the health center, in a statement. “As a dense, urban area with high rates of poverty, Lynn has been identified as an area with high risk. Our goal is to reduce the impact of COVID-19 in our community as much as possible.”
As of late last week, Pechinsky said nearly 40 percent of the people the health center has tested have come back positive for COVID-19. However, he said those numbers may not tell the whole story, as only symptomatic people have been tested.
In addition, up until two weeks ago, if someone was low risk, such as being young and otherwise healthy, they were told to quarantine at home for two weeks. Now, since capacity has increased, those people can be tested. Pechinsky said.
It’s important that even people with mild symptoms get tested, especially in an urban area like Lynn, where many people live close together and there’s a higher risk of spreading the disease as it’s more challenging for those residents to quarantine safely, Pechinsky said.
“We want to know what the disease burden is in our community,” said Pechinsky. “If we don’t do this testing, we won’t know the disease burden. (It’s to) inform folks to quarantine and limit the spread even more. That’s vital to trying to mitigate this even further.”
As of last Friday, there have been 891 COVID-19 cases in the city and 21 residents have died. By press time, the city had not released updated data.
Pechinsky said projections from health experts, which are based on in-patient hospitalizations and deaths, have shown that the peak day for the virus has been updated. The state’s peak was initially expected on April 18, or last Saturday, but has been pushed out to April 28.
There’s still an uptick of people being diagnosed and getting sicker, Pechinsky said, but he’s hopeful the date being pushed back indicates there’s been some bend in the curve.
He said the slower rise may reduce some of the burden on hospitals, which is one of the health center’s main objectives. By doing more testing on the outpatient side, Pechinsky said more people will be kept out of emergency rooms and hospitals will be reserved for those who are sickest.
“I’m hopeful that with the peak being pushed off a couple of weeks, we’ve bent the curve a little bit with all of the measures the city is taking,” said Pechinsky. “This is just one more step to mitigate the spread a little bit and prevent the hospitals from being overwhelmed.”
