GREEN BAY, WI (WTAQ-WLUK) – There’s now two functioning community test sites operating in Brown County.
In addition to the Resch Center, which has administered 1,879 tests since it opened one week ago, another site opened at Casa Alba in downtown Green Bay.
Brown County says it hopes to administer 900 tests a day with help from the Wisconsin National Guard.
“Ultimately, as citizen soldiers and airmen, we just want to remind people that we’re your neighbors,” said Captain Joe Trovato with the Wisconsin National Guard. “We’re from the same communities as our fellow citizens all across Wisconsin.”
Travato tells FOX 11 the National Guard has about 1,400 soldiers are helping with COVID-19 relief all over the state.
“While this particular response is new certainly and pandemic response is something that is different for us, serving our state and local communities in times of need is nothing new for us.”
The new community testing site in downtown Green Bay started seeing patients on Wednesday.
County Executive Troy Streckenbach tells FOX 11 they hope to administer 400 tests a day at that location.
“We were looking for a community partner that can help us communicate to individuals in our community that may be a little bit hesitant to come to the community test site.”
Streckenbach says the Resch Center wasn’t supposed to be a testing site at first. They wanted it to be on Green Bay’s East side, but heavy rain and flooding last week forced a change of plans.
“Of course, the Resch Center is a public asset. We often talk about public assets, whether it was the Brown County Arena, or now the Resch Center, these assets are there for hopefully never, but when it does, they’re available. We are finally taking advantage, unfortunately, of a community asset.”
As more tests are completed, Streckenbach. says they’ll be paying close attention to any that come back positive.
“As part of our recovery we need to test more people, we need that trajectory to go downward. The more we can test, the better ability for our county and community to find out how prevalent it is.”
These community testing sites will remain open until May 16th.
