BUFFALO, N.Y. — The Erie County Department of Health will be conducting a one-day clinic on Friday for diagnostic COVID-19 testing after a number of new cases have been traced back to the New Zion Baptist Church in Buffalo.
The new cases were traced to the church by the Department of Health's contact tracing team.
"Contact tracing is about breaking the chain of transmission,” Commissioner of Health Dr. Gale Burstein said. “Our epidemiology team is working with New Zion leadership to communicate directly with its congregation, inform them of their potential exposure and encourage them and their families to get a free diagnostic COVID-19 test at this clinic.”
The site will be active in the parking lot of the church on Friday from 10 a.m. until 2 p.m. for walk-up and drive-thru visits. Anybody who participated in activities at the church is strongly encouraged to get tested. A list of all available county or state run testing sites can be found here.
“This is the first time that we have used knowledge from our case investigations to coordinate a clinic to stop the chain of transmission,” Dr. Burstein said. “We have a chance to prevent a small grouping of new cases from becoming a much larger outbreak."
Burstein said the department plans to offer COVID testing clinics like this in the future as well.
Burstein and Erie County Executive Mark Poloncarz confirmed Wednesday that the health department's contact tracing team identified a set of individuals with positive COVID-19 tests who attended activities during the same time period.
"Right now it's just a small cluster," Burstein said.
She refused to say how many, until Poloncarz stepped up to volunteer more information.
"It's less than 10," he said.
But because they appeared to have attended the church at roughly the same time, and they are not related to each other, there is now concern about potential spread to several families, so the investigation will probably grow.
"We're encouraging anyone who has been to the New Zion Baptist Church in the past month to come to our testing site on the parking lot at the church on Friday and get tested," Burstein said.
And this pop up clinic differs from others in one important way.
"This is the only time that we are having a no appointment necessary because of what we feel is the very important nature of this," Poloncarz said.