CLARKSVILLE, Tenn. (CLARKSVILLENOW) – Between election year early voting and the upcoming reopening of school, finding a consistent home for daily drive-thru COVID-19 testing by the Montgomery County Health Department has been a challenge.

“Whenever our testing line has 40 or 60 cars in it, and elections are going on, they wouldn’t be able to handle that,” Health Department Director Joey Smith said Tuesday in a Clarksville’s Conversations interview. “And we can’t move back here (to Veterans Plaza) because we’re going to have November elections and the two weeks of early voting in October, so we’d have to move again.”

But there’s a new solution in the works. Starting Monday, Aug. 3, the testing site will move to Civitan Park, off Warfield Boulevard in St. Bethlehem, Smith said.

Elections, schools and coronavirus

At the start of coronavirus testing, the drive-thru site was in front of the actual Health Department office on Pageant Lane. But as traffic increased, it became necessary to move it to the other side of the Veterans Plaza parking lot, to Civic Hall.

With the start of early voting, on July 16 it was moved to Richview Middle School. But school will re-open soon, and Richview needs to be prepared for students. Early voting will end Saturday, Aug. 1, but another round of early voting — for the November election — is coming up Oct. 13-29.

To prevent the site from having to bounce around again, a more stable location was needed.

Smith said he consulted with Montgomery County Mayor Jim Durrett and Clarksville Mayor Joe Pitts on various parks that would have the parking lot and indoor facilities to accommodate testing, without testing interfering with daytime activities. After discussing several options, they landed on Civitan, which isn’t used as much as the other parks in morning hours during the school year.

Signage will be posted, and police and deputies will help direct visitors to the testing area.

Testing ‘like a pit crew’

While some people have been upset about long lines to get tested, Smith said their operation is very efficient, considering what they’re doing.

During the five hours of testing, which Smith looks at as 300 minutes, they have it down to 200 cars.

Some cars have one person being tested, some have a family of four, but Smith said they consistently manage to handle 200 cars each day.

“If 200 cars are lined up, we finish right on 12 (noon) so they can do that administrative work on the back end,” Smith said.

This means the Health Department is testing 10 cars every 15 minutes, or 1 car every 90 seconds.

“It’s like a pit crew,” he said.

But the bigger delay is happening with the time it takes for tests to come back, taking up to eight days, as 95 counties send tests in to state and private labs.

“They don’t have it down to a 90-second pit crew the way we do,” he said.

Getting tested

The COVID-19 testing site at Richview Middle, 2350 Memorial Drive, remains open through Friday, July 31, from 9 a.m. to noon each weekday. Testing moves to Civitan Park, 650 Bellamy Lane, starting Monday, Aug. 3.