ASHWAUBENON, Wis. (SPECTRUM NEWS) — A group of vehicles lined up four deep outside a large door in the rear of the Resch Center in Ashwaubenon Monday morning.

It was the first day of newly expanded community testing for people with symptoms of COVID-19 in Brown County. The goal of the program is to identify, isolate and help people with the illness to help cut off additional spread in the community. 

Testing is also being offered to the 20,000 to 30,000 people from surrounding counties working in Brown County.

“To me that is a significant game changer in terms of us finally being able to get a hold of how prevalent this is in our community and at the same time be able to start the process of isolating and quarantining and giving the services that are needed for those individuals who are positive with COVD-19,” said Brown County Executive Troy Streckenbach.

Brown County reported the death of a 43-year-old man over the weekend, the sixth COVID-19-related death in the county. Case numbers have also continued to increase, surpassing 1,400. That includes 12 cases in the nearby Oneida Nation, a community that is seeing it’s numbers creep upward the past several days.

Aggressive testing is revealing more cases in the county.

“If anything it says, ‘Let’s take this seriously,’” said Anna Destree of the Brown County Health and Human Services department. “It is in our community and if we do want the numbers to go down part of it is on us to stay home and ride this out.”

The drive-through testing takes several minutes with results coming back in five to seven days.

People should click here to make an appointment or to find additional information and testing days and times.

County officials are urging residents to continue to follow established guidelines like wearing masks in public, frequent hand washing and only leaving home when necessary.

“I think in general there’s this belief that this isn’t real, so it’s a significant challenge for public health. We have to compete against thoughts and beliefs that it’s not real or there are conspiracy theories tied to it.,” Destree said. “It’s very challenging.”