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No appointment necessary for Wednesday, June 17

COLUMBUS—Polk County is offering free testing on Wednesday, June 17 for COVID-19 for people with or without symptoms.

The testing will be available from 8:30-11 a.m. at 40 Ward St., Columbus. People can get tested at the site at those times for free through the county’s drive-thru service.

Polk County has remained at 51 positive tests this week after having a large jump last week of 16 new cases.

Of the county’s positives, 31 are presumed recovered with 16 active cases and 4 deaths.

Polk County is doing more frequent testing lately and LabCorp is also offering at-home test kits to be mailed in.

Polk County has completed a total of 541 tests, with 51 positives and 465 negatives. The county as of last Friday had 7 tests still pending but there has been no word of any new positives this week.

The county has completed a total of 114 drive-thru tests and answered 73 weekly message line calls.

Of the county’s positive tests, 62.7 percent have been female, compared to 37.3 percent male.

Most of the positive cases have been in persons 65 years of age and older, at more than 25 of the cases. There have been a little over 10 cases each in people 25-49 and 50-64, according to county data. There have also been a couple of cases in people 0-17 years of age and 18-24 in Polk County.

As of Friday, North Carolina had 39,481 lab-confirmed cases, with 812 patients hospitalized. The state has completed a total of 572,677 tests.

As of Friday, Buncombe County had 417 cases and 34 deaths; Henderson County had 398 cases and 48 deaths; Rutherford County had 197 cases and 6 deaths and Transylvania County had 16 cases and 1 death, according to the North Carolina Department of Health and Human Services.