The Tulsa County Sheriff’s Office now has a rapid COVID testing system for use at the jail.
The jail's medical provider, Turn Key Health, helped acquire the system, which runs antigen tests with results in 15 minutes.
Sheriff Vic Regalado said it will not be used in all cases when an inmate or jail employee needs a COVID test.
"But what we will do with this system is test inmates that are transferring to DOC or to other facilities so that we can prevent spread outside of the David L. Moss. We will use it as a preliminary test for incoming inmates who claim to be positive for the COVID-19. And, of course, we’ll use it for employees who have been exposed," Regalado said.
The system is the BD Veritor Plus, which has emergency use authorization through the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. FDA documents on the system say negative results should be treated as presumptive positive and confirmed with a molecular test, a process the state health department follows.
Regalado said in those cases, staff will consult with Turn Key.
"If you have an individual that’s asymptomatic, not showing anything, it may simply require a quarantine in a [negative airflow] cell. If they are displaying symptoms or are becoming sick, again, I think we would defer to our medical, but I would assume we would do a follow-up test to confirm," Regalado said.
The sheriff's office must pay for the antigen tests themselves, and they’ll start out with 2,000 at about $35 apiece.
Regalado said up to this point, nearly 1,700 standard COVID-19 tests have been administered, with five inmates testing positive. Negative airflow cells have been set up at the jail for isolation.
