Houston – Harris County Judge Lina Hidalgo says she is spending most of the weekend with officials from the Texas Medical Center and the city to build a testing system that will help the county better understand the scope of the new coronavirus.
“One thing we hear a lot from health officials is that they need additional testing capacity to be able to accurately assess what's happening,” Hidalgo said.
The city of Houston tweeted Saturday, that the Houston Office of Emergency Management and the Houston Health Department, are preparing for an expanded COVID-19 testing system starting next week and FEMA has offered to assist with one of the two mobile sites.
Local officials are working to figure out the logistics of the testing system, but Hidalgo says the goal of these testing sites is to be effective, safe and accessible.
“It needs to be accessible, it needs to be safe, we are not going to want people standing in a setting where they are maybe infecting one another. You can call it Drive-thru perhaps one will be a drive-thru and one will not be,” Hidalgo said.