Governor Tony Evers says that labs from four medical groups in our state are increasing the effort to grow the state’s ability to test for COVID-19 in Wisconsin.
The Wisconsin Clinical Lab Network is building a network with Exact Sciences, Marshfield Clinic Health System, Promega and UW Health. Already, the Milwaukee Public Health Lab and Wisconsin State Lab of Hygiene have been working on the increase in testing.
“The Wisconsin State Lab of Hygiene and the Milwaukee Public Health Lab should be commended for the tremendous lift they have done over the past few weeks to rapidly bring these tests online. And I want to especially extend my gratitude to the Wisconsin State Lab of Hygiene for going above and beyond to expand testing capacity within the Wisconsin Clinical Lab Network, and ensure Wisconsin does not have a backlog of COVID-19 tests,” said Gov. Evers in a statement.
“I also want to thank the Wisconsin Diagnostic Lab at Froedtert, Children’s Hospital of Wisconsin, Gundersen Health Systems, and Aurora Health Care for their early work and continued leadership. But even with these combined efforts, unfortunately, we know all too well that as this disease spreads there will be significant pressure on our labs to keep pace with testing.”
So far, the work being done by these groups have helped grown completion of tests to between 1,500 and 2,000 tests each day. The new partnership is “expected to double that capacity initially and continue to expand,” according to the news release from the governor.