With more cases of novel coronavirus (COVID-19) appearing in the St. Louis region, Mercy has opened three additional drive-through COVID-19 test collection sites in the St. Louis region, located in South St. Louis County, Washington and Hillsboro.
The South St. Louis County site is located in the parking lot of the MetLife building at 13045 Tesson Ferry Road. Its planned March 25 opening was put on hold, with a new opening date yet to be determined.
Mercy Test Collection Sites are exclusively for patients who meet the Centers for Disease Control and state health department guidelines for testing. To qualify for testing at the drive-through site, patients must have a fever of at least 100.4 degrees and respiratory symptoms including cough or shortness of breath, and either recent travel to a high-risk area or contact with a confirmed COVID-19 patient.
Anyone seeking a test must call Mercy’s COVID-19 Clinical Support Line at 314-251-0500 before arriving.
In addition to the South County test site, the Washington test site is located on the Washington Fairgrounds, 6 Fairgrounds Road. The site is near the Mercy First Aid Building and the Motorsports Arena and opened Monday, March 23.
The Hillsboro site is located at the Hillsboro Community Civic Club Jefferson County Fairgrounds at 10349 Business 21. The location opened on March 25. Mercy’s first test collection site opened Saturday, March 14, in Chesterfield at the Mercy Virtual Care Center, 15740 S. Outer Forty Road. In the first six days at that site, Mercy collected samples from 441 patients and is now seeing about 120 patients per day.
Results may take a couple days or up to a week depending on the lab conducting the test. There is a cost associated with the testing; most insurance companies along with Medicare and Medicaid have committed to covering the cost. No one will be turned away from the testing site due to cost.