Video: Community leaders join UW-Green Bay in promoting a COVID-19 Rapid Testing Center

Green Bay Mayor Eric Genrich and Brown County Executive Troy Streckenbach joined Chancellor Mike Alexander in promoting Rapid COVID-19 Testing at UW-Green Bay’s Weidner Center for the Performing Arts. The University is serving as a drive-up testing site for the community. The “surge testing” is a partnership between the UW System and the U.S, Department of Health and is available to anyone age 5-and-older at no cost, from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. by appointment at https://doineedacovid19test.com. Individuals do not have to be experiencing symptoms nor have close contact of someone with COVID-19 to get a test, nor do they need to live in Green Bay. ETrueNorth is under contract to administer the tests. 

Video Transcript for COVID-19 Rapid Testing Center: President Thompson from the UW System and the federal government for providing us the tests today to be able to provide for the community. We have over 12,000 tests that we’ll be able to give out. And we appreciate being able to host this on our campus and hopefully help our community to help stop the spread.

Thank you to the chancellor and his team for really bringing forward this rapid test opportunity to our area. Fifteen minutes you know you’ll have your results. This is the first time that we can actually have real-time testing taking place for the general community. And as we want to get our economy back, it’s really important for us to be able to have the ability to test and then know the results more immediately. To have that rapid testing ability, it’s not something that we’ve had previously in this community. I think it’s a good way to get a sense for what community spread actually looks like in the Green Bay area.

We need people to continue to be vigilant. We need people to continue to social distance, wear masks. Thanksgiving around the corner here to celebrate in a much different way. With just members of your own household, with your immediate family rather than those large gatherings around Thanksgiving and Christmas. Because we’re at a really critical point here. This is what we need not just in Green Bay, Brown County, State of Wisconsin, this is what we need all across the country. We have positivity rates in this community and this state, that are really through the roof. Which indicates that we need more testing. We need more contact tracing and this is a huge step in the right direction.

More at https://www.uwgb.edu/phoenix-forward.