MACON, Ga. — A service that was in high demand a year ago is trailing off.
Last year, people were waiting in line to have their noses swabbed for a COVID-19 test.
Now, the health department is seeing only a handful of testing appointments each week.
"We've seen a huge huge drop-off in demand," says Michael Hokanson with the North Central Health District.
At their peak last summer, The North Central Health District was collecting close to 1,400 tests a week across their 13 counties.
In October, that number fell to 500.
Now, Hokanson says they're collecting just 20 tests a week at their three remaining test sites.
He says testing through the state health department is available only in Baldwin, Hancock, and Houston counties.
"One of the reasons we think people are not really using public health for COVID-19 testing is a lot of people are looking for those rapid result tests," but he says sites that perform rapid tests are seeing a decline, too.
"That is a bit concerning considering that if testing doesn't get done, we don't really know the full level of spread in the community with the variants out there as well."
Dr. Jennifer Hoffman with Coliseum Medical Centers says even though the vaccine is available now, we still have a long way to go.
"We need somewhere between 70 and 90 percent of people being vaccinated to reach herd immunity," she says. "As of this moment, we are nowhere near the numbers we would need for herd immunity."
She says until we get there, testing is still an important factor in getting past the pandemic.
"Anyone who has symptoms suggestive of COVID most definitely needs to get tested," says Hoffman. "Thankfully, the rates are a lot lower than they had been, but it's still present in the community and circulating."
So if you haven't been vaccinated, she says you still need to be on the lookout for any symptoms or possible exposures.
Hokanson says a lot of the man power that was being put towards testing can now go towards vaccination and running other services since the demand is so low.