Testing capacity strained at times in La Crosse County

One of the keys to minimizing the spread of COVID-19 is to figure out where it’s at. In other words, testing.

A surge in COVID-19 cases in La Crosse County has been fairly steady now since mid-June, and that’s put pressure on getting everyone tested.

Friday’s National Guard testing site at Logan High School ran out of its 400 tests within the last hour.

“Even without that testing site from National Guard, we’ve been seeing a lot of testing maxing out at our health care systems,” La Crosse County health director Jen Rombalski said Monday at a public briefing. “It’s the first time, actually, we were able to maximize the number of tests we had available.

“Actually, we had a few folks that were there at the very end that couldn’t get tested that we needed to have them go to their healthcare provider.”

Rombalski said the surge in cases — 466 of the 593 total cases since June 16 — while it puts a strain on the system, it also is a glaring indicator.

“I think that tells me there’s a lot of virus in the community, a lot of individuals with symptoms in the community, and the need right now to get testing is very high.”

Another National Guard testing site is set up for July 24 at the OmniCenter in Onalaska, from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m.