(Spirit Lake)– The Test Iowa Clinic at Lakes Regional Healthcare will be closing Friday, April 16th. Jennifer Gustafson of LRH says the number of people utilizing that facility has continued to decline recently…
“Lately the numbers that we’ve been seeing in the Test Iowa clinic have gone down pretty significantly and now we’re usually only testing about 25 people a day, which is usually in two different time increments each day. And so, you know, it takes quite a bit of staffing and time and all of that to do that just for that purpose and so we’re going to be closing the Test Iowa clinic on Friday, April 16th. However people will still be able to be tested, they’ll just have to call their local healthcare provider and you know we suggest just calling Lakes Regional Family Medicine at 336-3750 and then they get them in to get tested.”
Gustafson says they’ll also be discontinuing the online COVID-19 questionnaire for vaccine…
“Our questionnaire has been a really good resource for us to get the people that are most vulnerable to severe illness from COVID-19 vaccinated first and it has served that purpose. However we’ve gotten most of those people vaccinated now, which is great. So we’re not really having the need to have the questionnaire any more. And as you know they’ve also been opening up more and more people to be able to be vaccinated, so that’s another part of it as well. So because of that reason we’re not going to be using the questionnaire any more starting on Monday, March 22nd.”
In addition to people over 65, Gustafson says Dickinson County Public Health is also now vaccinating those age 18 to 64 who have medical conditions that put them at increased risk of severe illness from COVID-19. She says some vaccination clinics will be held in coming weeks…
“I’m guessing probably two or three a week and we’ll have those listed on our website and lakes health-dot-org as well as on our Facebook page, and they will have scheduling links so they can click on those links and basically get themselves scheduled right then and there to get their vaccine. Those dates aren’t up on the site yet, we’re getting those scheduled and getting those coordinated but as soon as they are planned we will have those up and we’ll put them on our Facebook page.”
Vaccine is also being made available through other sources, including the Hy-Vee Pharmacy.
Governor Kim Reynolds announced Wednesday ALL Iowans will be ELIGIBLE to receive the vaccine starting April 5th.
