SEATTLE — On an overcast day in Seattle, a few dozen medical staff members, students and emergency workers with symptoms of the fast-spreading coronavirus spent their lunch break driving to a parking garage.

The UW Medicine’s Medical Center Northwest has turned part of the first floor of their four-story parking garage into a mobile testing clinic. Think fast-food drive-through, but instead of getting served a juicy burger, nurses come to take a nasal swab.

In about a day, patients find out whether they have the coronavirus.

Delays in testing have set back the United States’ response to containing the coronavirus, and the mobile clinic that has operated since March 6 is one attempt to identify cases earlier in Seattle, the center of the nation’s outbreak.

“It’s been a crazy couple of weeks,” says Dr. Seth Cohen, who is leading the effort and is the medical director of infection prevention at the UW Medical Center.