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FL National Guard To Start COVID-19 Testing In Immokalee May 3

Airmen with the 186th Air Refueling Wing administer COVID-19 tests at a mobile COVID-19 testing site Mississippi on April 1, 2020.
Tech Sgt. Adam Vance
/
The Florida Channel
Leon County Judge John Cooper on June 30, 2022, in a screen grab from The Florida Channel.

Starting Sunday, May 3rd, the Florida National Guardwill activate a COVID-19 testing site in Immokalee.

Immokalee Division Director for , Mark Lemke, said people won’t need a medical referral to get tested.

“We will not turn anybody away who shows up to get a test, until we run out of tests,” Lemke said.

On Tuesday, Lemke said the local health department was given 1,000 tests by the state   for the site.

“They want to see our burn rate for the first 1,000 [tests] and they will overnight more, we are trying to get them to just send us the other thousand now,” Lemke said.

Lemke said people will be tested on a first come, first serve basis.

“As we see how long it takes to get someone through the process, we’ll let the know so they can end that line when we feel that will take us up until either the end of the day or to the point when we are out of tests,” Lemke said.

County health officials said clients will be asked to provide their name, address, phone number and social security number, if they have one.

Information on how to access results will be available at the testing site in Spanish and Creole. Lemke says the department also wants to make that information available in Mam, a Mayan language.

“It gives them the information about the lab and if they don’t hear anything in five days, that they can call that number and get their results,” Lemke said.

Walk up and drive-through Covid-19 testing will be available from 11 a.m. to 7 p.m. from Sunday, May 3 through Tuesday, May 5 at the Collier DOH Immokalee branch location.

Copyright 2020 WGCU. To see more, visit .

Andrea Perdomo is a reporter for WGCU News. She started her career in public radio as an intern for the Miami-based NPR station, WLRN. Andrea graduated from Florida International University, where she was a contributing writer for the student-run newspaper, The Panther Press, and also a member of the university's Society of Professional Journalists chapter.