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The impact of COVID-19 on South Omaha and community response

Posted at 6:25 PM, May 21, 2020
and last updated 2020-05-21 23:49:22-04

OMAHA, Neb. (KMTV) - The number of COVID-19 positive cases in Douglas County keeps increasing.

The majority of them are in South Omaha. Now the city and state have been assisting with extra COVID-19 drive thru testing clinics.

Since last Thursday, Douglas County and the Nebraska National Guard have been conducting free drive-thru testing clinics near the One World Community Health Center.

The 300 daily tests are coming from two different labs in town. At the end of the shift, the labs pick up the tests and process them.

“In OneWorld's testing, there's about a 40% positive rate. In what the [National] Guard has been doing, we've only had about a day or two of results back and it's at 20 percent and that shows that testing is really necessary and that peoplet
ake it even more seriously and learn how to isolate,” said Andrea Skolkin, CEO of the One World Community Health Center.

The Nebraska National Guard testing will continue next week. They are testing anyone but giving priority to those who are symptomatic or work at food processing plants.

The South Omaha clinic's hours are changing. Starting Friday, it will run from noon until 5.

There will be no testing over the Memorial Day weekend. Testing will resume on Tuesday with those same hours.

3 News Now anchor Maya Saenz has more on how that testing is going in the above video.

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