Need a COVID-19 swab? Drive-thru requires an appointment

Sweetwater Memorial now uses oral swabs via curative.com

Appointments are now required in order for most people to be tested at the Drive-Thru COVID-19 Specimen Collection Center at Memorial Hospital of Sweetwater County.

Due to limited resources and to increase convenience, Curative oral swabs are now being used at the Drive-Thru COVID-19 Specimen Collection Center at Memorial Hospital of Sweetwater County.

You need to make a Curative.com appointment if:

• You think you may sick.
• If you believe you have been exposed to COVID-19.
• If you have been recommended to quarantine.

Notable exceptions to the appointments:

• Patients who require surgery, a colonoscopy or a procedure such as a pulmonary function test or sleep studies at Sweetwater Memorial.
• Patients scheduled for similar procedures at hospitals other than Sweetwater Memorial also do not need an appointment. However, please note that while MHSC can perform swabs and send them to reference labs, it cannot guarantee when test results will be available. MHSC staff will do their best to get the tests performed in a timely manner, but does rely on the efficiency of the reference labs.

The Curative test is free, made possible by the Wyoming Department of Health, Public Health Division, which is making tests available to swabbing centers through Wyoming’s County Health Departments.

It’s simple:

• Go to the curative.com website and register. You must use an updated browser such as Firefox or Google Chrome. If you need help making an appointment, call the swabbing hotline at 307-352-8360.
• Click on Memorial Hospital of Sweetwater County as your nearest testing site and schedule an appointment.
• DO NOT have food, drinks, candy, gum, mouthwash, tobacco, etc. up to 20 minutes before the swab collection.
• Drive up to the swabbing station in front of the hospital at 1200 College Drive at your appointed time. The hospital will have received your information and will have your swab kit waiting for you.
• A healthcare worker at the hospital will be prepared to help you with an oral swab. The healthcare worker will oversee the sample collection, which involves coughing to produce enough fluid for a viable sample.
• The hospital will send the sample via UPS, along with all of those collected that day, to the Curative test site in California.
• When test results are complete, Curative emails the results directly to the patient. The results are made available to Sweetwater Memorial and to the Wyoming Public Health Laboratory.

Curative’s test is authorized under the FDA’s Emergency Use Authorization. As of late March, the company said it had notified the FDA of its operation and received approval to operate commercial testing. The test is NOT authorized for unobserved at-home sample collection.

The test is 89.7% accurate, according to Curative. That means if 10 patients have coronavirus, the Curative test would accurately diagnose 9 of those patients as COVID-19 positive. This makes the Curative test as accurate if not more accurate than the nasopharyngeal test, according to Curative.

If you have questions about MHSC’s new swabbing test, call 307-352-8360 or go to the Coronavirus Update page at sweetwatermemorial.com.