Nurse practitioner provides insight into COVID-19 testing process

Where does the state health department receive the latest coronavirus data?

Coronavirus cases from the mississippi state department of health.

So, where does the state get those numbers?

Wtva's chelsea brown spoke with one monroe county clinic to see where the tests go after they leave the clinics.

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The urgent care clinic here in amory is currently for the coronavirus.

I spoke with christin cooper, a nurse practitioner with urgent care about what happens after workers test patients and how the mississippi state department of health gets those results.

Chirstin cooper - nurse practitioner "symptoms that the patients are displaying are all over the board."

When a patient comes in healthcare workers will first ask the patient about their symptoms and if they have been in any known contact with someone that has tested positive for coronavirus.

"we have had a lot of positives on asymptomatic lately."

The urgent care gives patients a coronavirus test, a lab picks up tests from the clinic each day.

"most of them are pretty patient, they are staying at home in quarantine but they are anxious to get the test results back."

It usually takes 3 or 4 days for the results to come back.

It normally takes a little longer on the weekends since their labs do not pick up tests then.

"sometime the delay is something in the lab, the machines messed up or something like that."

When the lab finishes processing the tests, the lab faxes the results to the urgent care.

Healthcare workers will then call the patient with the results.

The urgent care will contact the state department of health with positive case information.

The state department of health will contact the patients to start contact investigations and process the positive cases in their data to put out into the public.

Christin cooper says that the urgent care is getting results faster now than a few months ago.

"it's getting faster, at first we were averaging 7 days sometimes 10 to get the test results back."

Aslive tag: the urgent care clinic is offering antibody test.

Cooper says many patients that tested negative for flu and strep throat?

At the beginning of the year have come back to test for the antibody.

About ten percent of patients tested positive for the antibodies.

In amory, chelsea brown, wtva 9 news the