Stepped up testing in Madison County aims to slow asymptomatic spread of COVID-19

Asheville Citizen Times

The Madison County Health Department performed 50 tests at a drive thru screening event outside the Spring Creek Community Center June 3.

A drive thru testing event in the Spring Creek community of Madison County screened 50 individuals for COVID-19, the respiratory illness caused by the novel coronavirus. The free testing event open to anyone, including non-Madison County residents and those showing no symptoms, was the first offered by the Madison County Health Department since the onset of the pandemic.

A second free and open screening event is scheduled for Thursday, June 11 from 6-8 p.m. outside Hot Springs Elementary School.

“We are so happy we finally have the tests,” Renée Sprinkle, the communicable disease nurse at the health department said of the screenings. “So many people have wanted to be tested and couldn’t because there were so few test kits.”

Wendy Owenby, the lead clinic nurse at the Madison County Health Department, performs a "patient friendly" COVID-19 test on a Madison County resident seated inside her car at a drive thru testing event June 3 in Madison County.

Sprinkle stressed that the current nasal swab test offered by the health department is “patient friendly” and not the more notorious and invasive screen that requires a deep swab up an individual’s nose.

Asymptomatic spread

Bobby Woody, who lives a short drive from the Spring Creek Community Center, where the temporary testing center operated, was among those tested.

“I’m not thinking I have the virus, but I just want to be checked,” he said. “I surely don’t want to give it to someone else if I didn’t know I had it.”

The situation Woody describes is what public health officials refer to as asymptomatic transmission. Here, the virus lives inside an individual with little or no effect. This carrier can then pass the virus on to another individual with a compromised immune system or in a high-risk category, where the virus can have devastating health consequences.

Open testing events like the one in Spring Creek and the June 11 event planned for Hot Springs aim to slow and stop this type of spread.

“We got permission from the state to test more broadly,” Sprinkle said of stepped-up testing efforts in Madison County. “And we wanted to get out into corners of the community where residents may have a hard time getting to the health department.”

The drive from homes in Spring Creek to the health department office in Marshall, where residents can arrange to get tested by calling 649-3531, can last upwards of an hour over winding mountain roads. Serving residents who may be challenged by the trip was the aim of the event.

Testing materials loaded on the bed of a pickup remained sterile before nurses and lab tech worked to screen 50 residents for the coronavirus at a June 3 testing event in Spring Creek.

“We’re just so thankful to the health department that they put this together out here,” said Dave Thomas, the president of the Spring Creek Community Center board and owner of Dave’s 209, a popular restaurant located inside the renovated rock building high school.

Thomas himself got tested before getting behind the grill for an unexpected lunch rush, with many of those screened sticking around to grab a trademark milkshake at the restaurant now limited to takeout orders due to coronavirus precautions. Thomas said he wanted to be tested even though he did not have any symptoms in order to feel more comfortable when preparing and serving food to customers.

“It’s stressful,” he said.

The return of tourists to the area – the restaurant sits along NC 209 Highway, a popular path known to motorcyclists as “The Rattler” – has Thomas conflicted about the uptick in business from customers from potential hot spots. While he’s glad to welcome customers, he concerned they may be unwitting carriers.

“I know it’s an invisible thing,” he said of the virus.

Thomas described his COVID-19 test as “a snapshot of life at the restaurant,” and he understood that the result would only reveal whether he had the virus at the time of the screen.

“I’m anxious to find out more on antibody testing,” he said.

Antibody tests, which can reveal whether an individual already had the coronavirus, are not yet widely available and have been shown to produce questionable results. The Madison County Health Department tests are not antibody tests and screen only for current cases of COVID-19.

The health department has performed upwards of 400 tests as of June 5, according to Sprinkle, with three confirmed cases among county residents.Results from the Spring Creek testing event were trickling in two days after the midweek test.

The turnaround time for results, typically two-to-three days, would have Sprinkle working through the weekend. “I’ll be checking and making calls throughout the weekend,” she said. "I know these results are important to people."

To learn more about the COVID-19 testing events through the Madison County Health Department, call 649-3531.