The University of Alabama at Birmingham hospital will soon deploy a mobile coronavirus testing unit that will drive to Birmingham neighborhoods and provide testing to local citizens.

“Not all patients in Birmingham … want to or can come to a downtown drive-thru testing site. So we want to be able to go to them, and meet them in their communities where they are,” said Jordan DeMoss, vice president for Clinical Operations at UAB Medicine.

Demoss and UAB’s Dr. Rachael Lee held a press conference Monday to update the public on the facility’s COVID-19 efforts.

The mobile testing center will provide COVID-19 tests to patients who are experiencing symptoms. Patients will need to call (205) 975-2819 to make an appointment.

Hours for the unit will be 1:00 to 3:00 p.m.; the unit expects to handle 50-100 people per day.

The CDC recently expanded the number of symptoms listed as indicators of the coronavirus. They now include; fever, cough, shortness of breath, chills, repeated shaking with the chills, muscle pain, headache, sore throat, new loss of taste or smell.

The first location for the mobile testing center will be at Central Park Christian School in the Bush Hills neighborhood of Birmingham. Later this week, it will move to the Center Point neighborhood.

The mobile unit is designed to help people in the immediate neighborhood where it is parked on any given day. Citizens in other neighborhoods should request an appointment at the downtown drive-thru clinic that UAB has been operating for several weeks now.

Demoss said on Monday that the downtown drive-thru location has provided more than 5,000 tests.

Henry Thornton is a staff writer for Yellowhammer News. You can contact him by email: [email protected] or on Twitter @HenryThornton95