Free COVID testing draws a crowd to Marlowe Middle School parking lot
HUNTLEY – Hundreds of people took advantage of free drive-through COVID testing Saturday morning in the parking lot at Marlowe Middle School.
The first person in line — a woman wearing a colorful facemask and a hat that read “Hold My Drink, I Gotta Pet My Dog” — didn’t want to give her name but arrived about 6:45 a.m. for the 9 a.m. start of testing. She came early, she said, “because everybody heard on the news about people waiting for hours for the test.”
That would likely be the case for those who arrived at 9 or slightly after. By 8 a.m., 16 cars stood down one side of the roadway that surrounds the parking lot. About 45 minutes later, the line stretched around the lot and out to Haligus Road. The next 10 cars lined up facing east along the edge of Haligus before a westbound car pulled into the turn lane, clicked on a turn signal and started a conflicting line in the opposite direction. More cars followed, and Lake in the Hills police weren’t too far behind.
Al Luggett drove his black Dodge pickup into the No. 2 spot in line as the sun rose just before 7 a.m. He had been goose-hunting with his grandson last weekend in Racine, Wisconsin. At midweek, he got a call that both his grandson and his grandson’s wife had tested positive for COVID, so Luggett drove down from Richmond just to find out if he had it, too. As noisy, migrating geese filled the ponds around Marlowe, and formed and reformed vees above the parking lot, Luggett smiled about his hunting trip and said, “We managed to get a Christmas goose or two.”
Jeff Shaw and Jasper Ralston of HR Support, a subcontractor for the Illinois Department of Public Health, arrived early to set up the testing station, just a tent and a few folding tables holding a couple of laptops and boxes of forms and sealed plastic pouches. Each pouch contained a plastic stick with a soft plastic brush on the end that a technician rotated in each person’s nose, 10 seconds per nostril, producing a sample for testing, along with teary eyes and sneezes before the cars drove away.
Shaw said he had run more than 100 testing sites for the state, averaging five or six a week since the beginning of July. As people waited in their cars, HR Supply employees handed out information sheets to collect individuals’ names, addresses and phone numbers and connect them with the test samples. Within four to seven days, each person tested is supposed to be contacted by phone with the test results.
People waiting in their cars were instructed to call a toll-free number to talk with a representative of HR Supply who would take their identity information and give them a number for their test. The sound of car phones ringing through audio systems could be heard throughout the parking lot, but only a couple of people connected, delaying the beginning of the testing so that only five cars made it through the line in the first 45 minutes.
With spikes reported in various indicators for new cases of COVID-19, Shaw said his company’s testing sites are becoming more crowded. During the last week, he said, more than 400 people a day had been tested in Vernon Hills and Libertyville.
“The numbers are going crazy in Lake and McHenry counties,” he said. Interest in the tests increased drastically after President Donald J. Trump was hospitalized with COVID and his family members tested positive.
And while he had enough supplies to take 800 samples on Saturday, Shaw said he was restricted by time and the number of contract employees showing up for work. As the weather has turned more fall-like, fewer people are willing to work all day in the cold, he said, indicating that technicians are continually cleaning their hands with hand sanitizer.
The McHenry County Department of Health reported spikes in four categories it uses to track COVID-19 infections. When the numbers rose above a standard set by the state, schools that had been operating in a hybrid mode regressed to fully remote education, and restrictions were imposed on bars and restaurants.
