-One that's coming to get tested has hard stomach pain,
nose run, dry cough, chest pain, no fever,
but everything else she said meets the criteria.
She's on her way.
Said 12:15 we'll take it.
-Wednesday night, I didn't sleep
because we had our first case in West Virginia --
two cases. North and south.
And I knew in northern West Virginia,
they're doing drive-through testing.
I contacted someone up there who's in charge,
and I said, "Why are we not sending --
these hospitals down here, why are they not doing it?"
And he said, "We will try to get the health department involved."
And I said, "Well, if it's okay with you, I can do it."
He said go ahead.
Tell him I'm late and I'll call him in a little bit, please.
There's someone who's waiting online.
If he needs his medicine,
can you just tell him we'll call it in, please?
I didn't go to work the next day.
I spent five, six hours on the phone
trying to figure out how to get enough testing kits,
who's gonna pick up the samples, you name it.
Logistics involved.
And the next day, we had this tent popped up,
and we had 50, 60 calls on my answering machine.
So to me, if somebody wants to do something,
all they have to do is do it.
-Yeah, so this is probably one of the ones
that called that got their doctor's note.
We had two that called and said
that they just needed to know that we were still doing it.
The other doctor's note had all the symptoms
and was deemed to be a person who would fit COVID-19 testing.
So hopefully this is a negative one too.
-We're in a rural area.
You know, Beckley is considered a rural area
compared to other cities.
So our hospital's a 170-bed, 200-bed hospital.
You're looking at ICU beds, there's maybe 8 to 10 beds.
So if you think about it in that capacity,
you're looking at about a city that can hold maybe 20 ICU beds.
If you get 20 cases of COVID-19 in itself that are severe --
forget about the patients that are already critically ill.
People are forgetting that the hospital
already has critically ill patients.
So we can't handle that just in sheer quantity.
In West Virginia, we were able to prepare in a sense
because we were the last state with any positive cases.
So in that way, we were able to build up something.
But at the same time, because of that,
I think people have a false sense of security.
They think we don't have any of these cases here.
But it's also the lack of kits.
-Alright, we'll go ahead and swab you.
-Okay.
-I do think we should have more tests.
I don't understand how a country
like the United States doesn't have that capability.
-One minute. -Okay.
It's not as bad as I thought.
I heard it was uncomfortable. It's not too bad.
-We only were sent, to our state level, 500 testing kits.
So to date, I think we've tested I believe -- last night,
I read 464 tests have been done.
16 are positive, 4 are pending.
But people don't realize only 466 people have been tested
out of an entire state.
-Are you testing out here? -You know,
so it's a little questionable what's going on in the state.
We probably have missed some.
On Senator Manchin's newsletter,
he claimed that ARH and Raleigh General are testing.
I asked Dr Gulch. He said no.
I don't know if the hospitals are testing.
We started out with only eight kits on Friday.
We had 20 more delivered to us Friday evening.
So we're out there now with more.
We're supposed to get more.
So any amount we can start with, even if we can get
that one person and they're positive,
we can stop the spread.
That can save a whole town if you can isolate them.
Because people here were not listening to isolation.
-He said "We just started in-house testing today."
-Okay.
-"When LabCorp and Mayo did it, it was like 440."
I would have thought more.
"Also, our testing was gonna be covered by government.
I'll update you in a few."
-That's what Trump said on the speech.
-That all tests would be covered?
-That's what he said, but I don't know how.
Not having a lot of tests of course makes any doctor
or health care person feel bad
because you know that people want reassurance.
-We have somebody.
-And I tell people this all the time --
I couldn't test myself right now.
I couldn't test any family member right now
unless I lied on that questionnaire.
I couldn't test any staff member right now
because we don't fit the criteria.
-Very uncomfortable.
It has to go all the way in there, dear,
for about a minute. I'm sorry.
You can close your window, buddy.
Alright.
-We had a couple people even drive up today,
even my own patients,
thinking they can just get swabbed for COVID-19.
If we had 1,000 kits, we could just swab everybody.
But because people don't know what they have,
it's causing this panic.
Thanks, buddy.
It only takes about four days we've been seeing.
It's not too bad.
One of my family members is a doctor here, and he told me
he doesn't want me to do this drive-through testing.
He said, "I don't want you to do it.
It's dangerous.
The health department, that's their responsibility."
I said, "No."
I said, "Listen, it can affect any of us.
It can affect anyone in our family.
If anything, I can stop it
because what if it affects one of you guys?
Doesn't matter." I said, "We have to test.
We have to test this community."
Oh, put it on our little paper there.
[speaks indistinctly]