FAIR OAKS, Calif. — As the sun set on another day of the stay-at-home order, Dr. Rusty Oshita, the owner and Medical Director of Urgent Care Now, is thinking of new ways he can help "meet the moment."
"We talk about things that we need to do or should do, this is what I need to be doing, this is what I should be doing," Oshita said.
Oshita is working on a plan to send a group of local doctors, including himself, to help in New York City in less than two weeks where hospitals and morgues are overloaded because of the coronavirus.
In New York, nearly 103,000 people have tested positive for the virus, more than half of which have come from New York City. Nearly 3,000 people have died from the virus in New York.
Things are far less dire in California where nearly 10,701 people have tested positive for COVID-19, and 237 people have died from the virus, according to state health officials.
In the meantime, Oshita is making sure more vulnerable people closer to home are getting tested.
His two urgent care centers in Arden and Fair Oaks are now offering coronavirus testing commercially through LabCorp, both inside the clinic, and outside where healthcare workers do drive-through testing.
In order to get a test, patients have to pay for a standard clinic visit and fall within the guidelines issued by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention — those showing symptoms and in high-risk groups.
"Now that the commercial tests are available and the collection test kits have changed the swap and specimen collection, it's increased our ability to do it," Oshita said.
As those commercial tests have become available in the last two weeks, Oshita's team has tested about 60 patients, and so far, nine of which have come back positive.
Currently, the state has nearly 60,000 tests pending inside of commercial, state and private labs — including LabCorp. The state has so far tested 94,800 people.
"I'm an emergency physician, I hear this all the time on shift, I don't want to go to the emergency department, I'll get COVID," he said.
If you feel like you should be tested, call Urgent Care Now first before going in at (916) 727-1400.
Follow the conversation on Facebook with Lena Howland.
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