/ Javier Valle with Reditus Labs takes a swab from a motorist at the COVID-19 drive-thru testing facility at the Interstate Center in Bloomington
McLean County s largest coronavirus testing facility for much of the last year, the Interstate Center in Bloomington, will close its testing site at the end of July, and the area s largest vaccination site also has set a timetable for shutting down.
Private health care providers say they are ready to continue the public health response.
At its peak last November, the Interstate Center was conducting more than 1,000 coronavirus tests per day, according to data provided by the McLean County Emergency Management Agency and compiled by WGLT. At the time, the county s positivity rate was in double digits. New cases were coming in by the hundreds daily.
It took McLean County six months to get to 40% of the population fully vaccinated against COVID-19. Health officials say they're optimistic the rate will climb through the summer and fall, even as the number of residents getting doses dwindles.
Reditus Labs
Originally published on March 16, 2021 5:57 pm
The Illinois Department of Public Health (IDPH) has announced its COVID-19 testing sites in Bloomington, Peoria and eight other locations will scale back to four days a week as demand has declined.
IDPH said in a news release the agency plans to shift mobile testing staff from its community-based testing sites to locations that have higher demand for testing, including schools and processing plants.
Other sites cutting hours are in Arlington Heights, Aurora, Chicago, Waukegan, Champaign, East St. Louis, Harwood Heights and Rockford, said IDPH.
“By focusing on taking testing to where people are, we hope to increase the number of people being tested for COVID-19,” said IDPH Director Dr. Ngozi Ezike. “Testing is important to quickly identify individuals with COVID-19 to stop further spread of the virus.
Lexington schools/Facebook
A Bloomington pharmacy has stepped in to help the McLean County Health Department get COVID-19 vaccines into teachers arms.
Genoa Healthcare, which is located at Chestnut Family Health Center, has been scheduling vaccination clinics throughout the month of February.
Sam Wilkes
Pharmacist Sam Wilkes runs the clinics. She said Genoa wanted to take the vaccines to schools that are outside Bloomington-Normal because the health department wasn t able to do that.
“They didn’t have the staff to go to the rural schools and they would have to schedule each district individually and assign it out on their own as opposed to us doing it,” Wilkes said.
Emily Bollinger / WGLT
Health care workers were given top priority when COVID-19 vaccines were rolled out across the country. But not all who are eligible are jumping at the opportunity.
A recent survey from the Kaiser Family Foundation found nearly a third (29%) of health care workers probably or definitely would not accept a COVID-19 vaccine. That’s slightly higher than the percentage of the general public that said they don’t plan to take it (27%).
Those figures are on par with what some central Illinois health care providers are seeing.
Ryan Taylor is assistant director of Green Tree Pharmacy that handles pharmacy services for close to 50 Heritage Health senior care facilities around Illinois, including in Bloomington, Chillicothe, El Paso and Minonk, among other locations.