Gov. Tom Wolf and Director of Testing and Contact Tracing Michael Huff announced the extension of the Department of Health’s contract with AMI Expeditionary Healthcare to provide COVID-19 testing in five regions across Pennsylvania to help contain local spread of COVID-19.

“Every day COVID continues to spread in the commonwealth, every day our numbers continue to rise, and that puts our health care system and our health care workers at greater risk,” Gov. Wolf said. “To help stop the spread, we are announcing a new testing strategy in the commonwealth, one that will help improve access to testing for Pennsylvanians in every region of the state.”

Beginning today, drive-thru and indoor walk-in testing clinics will be held to contain the recent rapid increase in COVID-19 cases in five counties, including Northampton.

Testing will be available daily from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. at William Penn Highway Park & Ride, Emrick Boulevard, Easton.

Up to 450 patients can be tested per day at each location. Mid-nasal passage swab PCR tests will be performed. Testing is on a first-come, first-serve basis and is completely free to all patients. Patients must be ages 3 and older and are not required to show symptoms of COVID-19 in order to be tested.

No appointment is necessary. Patients are encouraged to bring a photo ID or insurance card. Registration will also be completed on-site. The turnaround time for testing results is two to seven days after testing.

Over the next 12 weeks, five strike teams will provide regional testing for 61 counties.

“We have seen a rapid increase of positive case counts reaching record-high levels, which gives us significant cause for concern,” Michael Huff said. “AMI has been a significant partner to the Department of Health by providing pop-up testing in counties with a high positivity-rate and other factors contributing to outbreaks of COVID-19 across the commonwealth.

“These testing sites are open to anyone who feels they need a test. It is important that even people with no symptoms who test positive isolate to stop the spread of COVID-19.”

The Department of Health believes increased testing will assist in determining the prevalence of the virus and assist counties in moving forward. Counties of concern, identified as those with percent positives above 5%, can be found on the Early Warning Monitoring Dashboard on the health department’s website.

Pennsylvania’s overall rate percent positive rate is 11.7%. Schuylkill County has the highest rate in the region at 18.9% in the last seven days, an increase from 14.3%. Carbon County’s rate is 12.6%, an increase from 10.9 in the previous seven days. The rest of region is: Lehigh, 13.1% in the last seven days, up from 11.4%; Luzerne, 13.7% up from 13.3%; Monroe, 11.6%, an increase from 9.9%; Northampton, 10.9%, up from 10.1%.

Carbon’s incidence rate per 100,000 residents jumped in the last seven days to 355 from 256.9 in the previous seven days. Rates in other local counties are: Lehigh, 394.5 from 298; Luzerne, 375.9 from 352; Monroe, 228.9 from 171.1; Northampton, 374 from 282.5, and Schuylkill, 453.3 from 330.1.

On Tuesday there were 5,676 additional positive cases of COVID-19, bringing the statewide total to 367,140. There are 4,631 people hospitalized with COVID-19. Of that, 970 patients are in the intensive care unit with COVID-19. The trend in the 14-day moving average of number of hospitalized patients per day has increased by nearly 3,200 since the end of September.

There were 180 new deaths reported Tuesday, for a total of 10,563 statewide deaths attributed to COVID-19.