The Johnson County Board of County Commissioners approved a program on April 6 that would allow between 3,000 and 5,000 drive-through COVID-19 tests by way of a random selection process.
It was decided in a virtual board meeting that up to $400,000 would be spent on testing to obtain better data.
Now that Johnson County has reached community transmission — where the virus can no longer be traced to just one person — it’s necessary to collect better data on how the outbreak is affecting the county, public health director Sammy Areola said in a press conference Wednesday. Testing will begin with nearly 500 people at a drive-through location near Olathe Northwest High School on Friday.
They aim at eventually testing around 4,000 randomly selected residents, regardless of if they have symptoms or not. The goal is to analyze how the virus is spreading in the community, including people that are asymptomatic.
ETC Institute, a marketing firm in Olathe, will work alongside the county in developing a randomized sampling pool — sending out virtual surveys to those people, then calling on selected individuals to get tested.
Until the total number of people tested reaches 2,000, groups will continue to be tested over the coming weeks before they decide if they need to continue to collect more data.
Additionally, some Johnson County residents who take an online survey and describe having symptoms related to the coronavirus will be tested. The survey can be found at jocogov.org.
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