{"id":53594,"date":"2020-06-03T18:23:45","date_gmt":"2020-06-04T00:23:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/free-covid-19-testing-happening-today\/"},"modified":"2026-03-31T04:05:04","modified_gmt":"2026-03-31T10:05:04","slug":"free-covid-19-testing-happening-today","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/free-covid-19-testing-happening-today\/","title":{"rendered":"Free COVID-19 testing happening today"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p><figure class=\"wp-block-image naviga-inline-image\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/imengine.public.prod.dur.navigacloud.com\/?uuid=1c8d686d-ec46-4b06-9b50-50cf43ee3133&amp;function=cover&amp;type=preview&amp;source=false&amp;width=2000\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1439\" alt=\"Free COVID-19 testing will be going on until 3 p.m. today at the Montezuma County Fairgrounds. No appointment is necessary, and no symptoms are required. Anyone can get tested.\" class=\"naviga-image\" loading=\"lazy\"><figcaption><span class=\"caption\">Free COVID-19 testing will be going on until 3 p.m. today at the Montezuma County Fairgrounds. No appointment is necessary, and no symptoms are required. Anyone can get tested.<\/span><span class=\"credit\">Jim Mimiaga\/The Journal<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p><p>Free COVID-19 testing is happening today at the Montezuma County Fairgrounds from 8 a.m. until 3 p.m.<\/p>\n<p>No symptoms or appointments are necessary, and there is no wait time. Results are available in 5-7 days.<\/p>\n<p>Turnout has been less than expected, officials said Wednesday morning.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThere was a line the first hour but it has since tapered off,\u201d said county health department physician Dr. Kent Aikin. \u201cWe\u2019re hoping to get more participation this afternoon.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Three drive-thru testing stations are set up. The test is a nasal swab administered by a health professional.<\/p>\n<p>Lyla Hansen said she got tested and the process \u201ctook just five minutes. Good information was handed out. I\u2019m calling my friends to remind them about it.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The drive-thru testing clinic was organized by the county health department, and 1,000 test kits were provided by the Colorado Department of Health and Environment.<\/p>\n<p>As of 10:30 a.m. about 175 tests had been conducted, Aikin said. Officials are hoping to conduct 1,000 tests. Additional free testing days are being considered.<\/p>\n<p>Community-wide testing is important to control the infection rate, health officials said. Positive cases are instructed to self-quarantine and contact tracing informs others they may have been exposed.<\/p>\n<p>COVID-19 is a unique  virus because carriers can have no symptoms and are spreading the potentially deadly virus unknowingly, Aikin said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Drive-thru clinic is at the Montezuma County Fairgrounds<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":44088,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[685,21,13,28,29],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-53594","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-coronavirus-covid-19","tag-cortez","tag-frontpage-lead","tag-headlines","tag-newsletter"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/53594","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=53594"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/53594\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":88321,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/53594\/revisions\/88321"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/44088"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=53594"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=53594"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=53594"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=53594"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}