Bellin Health and Door County Medical Center are teaming up for a community COVID-19 testing event Thursday. It is the first one in the area to welcome anyone, including those without symptoms, to get swabbed. There is no charge, and it will take place at the Door County Fairgrounds beginning at 10 AM. Bellin senior financial analyst Patrick Rowan says there has been a lot of interest in whether a newly approved saliva test will be utilized at the event. 

While the saliva test will not be available this Thursday, it is being hyped as a potential game-changer. Currently, it takes days to get results back, sometimes upwards of a week. The Food and Drug Administration has approved SalivaDirect for emergency use. It is a product of Yale University, seen as less invasive than current measures. It needs fewer chemical ingredients to process results, which allow the average lab to return nearly 100 samples in three hours. Yale is making the technology available open-source, meaning others are permitted to duplicate the design without penalty. Combine that with the need for fewer materials, thus costs are expected to be significantly lower moving forward.