TOLEDO, Ohio — As cases continue to rise across the state and with Thanksgiving just days away, demand is high for COVID-19 testing in Lucas County.
The Ohio Department of Health held COVID-19 pop-up testing last week at the University of Toledo and the Lucas County Fairgrounds.
Health Commissioner for the Toledo-Lucas County Health Department Eric Zgodzinski said they completed somewhere around 4,500 tests, or well over 1,000 per day.
Staff at testing sites were forced to turn people away this time, which wasn't a major issue during the county's previous COVID-19 surge.
Health department leaders are encouraging people to avoid traveling and to celebrate with those in their immediate households for fear Thanksgiving may be a super-spreader event. But if people still intend to travel, Zgodzinksi said they shouldn't just rely on a single test.
"That testing has some limited usefulness for Thanksgiving unless you're doing a lot of things before and after that test," he said.
Some of those things include quarantining, wearing a mask and washing your hands.
If you get a PCR test processed in a lab, you should expect to wait two to four days or more to get results.