A drive thru coronavirus testing station, where people can pull up, wind down their windows, and have their swabs taken, has opened in South Australia. The clinic is set up at the former Repatriation Hospital site, in Adelaide’s inner-southern suburbs, and is thought to be the first of its kind in Australia, ABC reports. Once fully operational, it is expected to be able to receive a patient every 20 minutes.
Those wanting to undergo a test will need to get a referral from their GP before attending the drive thru, however, as SA Pathology’s clinical service director Dr Tom Dodd explained the service is not intended to replace clinical services. Rather, it will provide a means for health professionals to collect samples from people who may have been affected by the virus.
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“This is a pathology collection point only at this stage and we will be making it very clear to GPs that they’ll need to see the patients first and then refer the patients onto here after they’ve organised a collection time,” he told the ABC. Dr Dodd also further indicated that the station was a national first, and suggested that “it will be very effective in supporting isolation and barriers for patients with… COVID-19.”
“Patients will just literally be able to drive through this side of the repat [hospital], wind their window down, and the specimens will be collected directly out of the car window by SA Pathology nurses [who] will be wearing personal protective equipment,” he explained. “It presents no risk at all for anyone working on the site and will support isolation of those patients until the results of their tests are known.”
The opening of Adelaide’s drive thru clinic follows in the wake of similar facilities that were opened last week in multiple cities around South Korea—the second-most heavily impacted country in the world, after China. Dr Seo Wan-seok, vice director of the Yeungham University Medical Centre, espoused the benefits of the testing stations in conversation with South China Morning Post.
“We can diagnose a lot of people in a short period of time, so we can effectively control the coronavirus,” he said, pointing out that the “drive thru” nature of the testing facility minimises the chance of infection between patients. “If each of them [the patients] stays in their cars, then there’s no chance of infection.”
Similar facilities have also opened in the United States and the United Kingdom.
