Huntsville Hospital CEO David Spillers said Wednesday that masks would be now required wearing for anyone who enters a hospital building.

“We are going to be implementing a masking policy for anyone in our hospital,” Spillers said. “If you are in our hospital, you will have to wear a mask. We’re currently acquiring the necessary masks to do that."

Spillers said that Crestwood Hospital in south Huntsville is adopting a similar policy.

"Crestwood is going to do the same thing. We think that’s good for our patients. We know it’s good for our staff. As soon as we have appropriate supplies, we will do that.”

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Huntsville and Crestwood are believed to be the first Alabama hospitals to require everyone to wear a mask to slow the spread of the novel coronavirus.

Meanwhile, Spillers said about 400 patients in Madison County received COVID-19 tests on Tuesday.

As of midday Wednesday, Spillers said there were eight people in Madison County hospitalized with the coronavirus and the fact that none needed a ventilator was good news. Another 44 patients are hospitalized while awaiting test results.

"The glimmer of hope is we're meeting demand for the test right now (even without the drive-thru site)," he said. The drive-thru site is closed until at least next week because of a lack of test kits.

Altogether, Spillers said almost 4,000 people have been tested in Madison County and more than 6,000 throughout the Huntsville Hospital System in north Alabama. The positive rate for those tests has been 2.4 percent and Spillers said, "those numbers are actually positive."

Future test results will soon be almost immediate in the hospital after pharmaceutical giant Roche provided Huntsville Hospital with the test tools necessary to perform those tests at the hospital. Spillers has been calling for such access for several days, saying the hospital had the capability to conduct the tests but needed certain computer software from Roche to do it.

"Roche has stepped up and we are actually going to be testing in our lab," Spillers said. "They are currently working with team in our lab to get that set up by the end of this week or early next week. It's about 200 tests a day is what we think we're going to be able to get from them. That would be the same number that UAB (Hospital in Birmingham) gets daily. These tests would be very quick turnaround. We would use these for the patients who are under investigation (as possible COVID-19 positive tests)."

The hospital has also been getting quick turnaround testing from Huntsville's Diatherix biological testing company, which is located at HudsonAlpha Institute for Biotechnology. That testing will continue but now the hospital has expanded its quick turnaround capability, Spillers said.

"Anything we can do to speed up tests, I think that's very important," Spillers said. "It allows us to rule out patients quicker and get them into a process where we can get them off all the utilization supplies. Or if we get a positive, we can proceed knowing that they are positive. Nationally, when you see this quick test that everybody is trying to develop, that's the reason they want to do that."

Quick results also allows hospitals to preserve scarce personal protective equipment for healthcare workers if the patient tests negative instead of having an extended period of unknown that must be treated like a positive test, Spillers said.