Hundreds of cars are lined up at the Church of the Highlands for a third day of drive-through COVID-19 testing.

The Church of the Highlands continued hosting drive-through testing on Thursday at its Grants Mill Road campus, with hundreds of cars lined up by 6:30 a.m.

Testing will begin by 9 a.m.

The tests are being administered by the staff of Christ Health Center, a clinic founded by the church in Woodlawn in 2009, and will be processed by Assurance Scientific Laboratory in Birmingham, which provides the test kits.

They did 347 tests Tuesday, 630 Wednesday and will go over 1,000 total tests this morning. On Tuesday, testing discovered 8 positive cases of COVID-19, said Christ Health Center CEO Dr. Robert Record. The state reported a total of 51 confirmed cases as of Wednesday. Record said the numbers were reported immediately to the state, but he’s not sure if the 8 cases are included in the total of 51 or will be added.

The testing is being done in tents on the parking lot at the main campus of the church on Grants Mill Road, just off Interstate 459. More than 100 volunteers and medical staff workers are coordinating the effort.

With 400 cars on campus by 7 a.m. Wednesday, testing began earlier than planned, at about 8:25 a.m., Record said.

“People are scared,” Record said. “They want to be tested. Some can’t go back to work until they are tested. We wanted to help them. People are just hurting out there.”

The church’s testing site at its Grandview campus near U.S. 280 was overwhelmed with demand on Tuesday, so the location for Wednesday’s testing was shifted to the Church of the Highlands’ main campus on Grants Mill Road in Irondale.

Cars were allowed to line up at 6:30 a.m. Wednesday morning and by 7 a.m., 400 cars were lined up on the church campus, Record said. That pattern is holding true Thursday as well.

People are discouraged from coming if they don’t have clear symptoms. Pre-screening will be done on site.

“What we saw ... was thousands of people wanted testing,” said Church of the Highlands Associate Pastor Layne Schranz. “We’re going to do our best to increase our efficiency and increase our number every day.”

Drive-through testing patients are being billed through their health insurance. “Uninsured paid nothing," Schranz said. "If they had insurance they will be billed.”

Road signs from the Alabama Department of Transportation will continue to be posted to announce when the church has reached capacity for the day.

“Each day we’ll let you know what we’ll be able to do the next day,” Schranz said.

“Every day we’re going to re-engineer the system and see how we can make it better,” Record said. “Every day, for the foreseeable future.”

Clinic founded by church

Christ Health Center was founded by the Church of the Highlands as a health ministry and clinic in 2009 based in Woodlawn. “It is its own 501c3 non-profit,” with board members from other churches as well, said Record, a family physician who is also an associate pastor on the staff at the Church of the Highlands. “We don’t want the good we do to be ‘we,’ we want it to be all of us.”

Record said Christ Health Center was overwhelmed with a demand for tests last week but had no tests available. Record and Dr. Ty Thomas, anesthesiologist, founder and lab director at Birmingham-based Assurance Scientific Laboratories, began working together on testing Saturday at the company’s office which is also just off U.S. 280.

By Tuesday, the church set up the testing site at Grandview, the former Cahaba Grand Conference Center and former headquarters of HealthSouth which the church purchased in 2016. Testing was done in the parking deck. “That was a hospital today,” Record said.

It quickly became apparent demand was overwhelming and traffic was backing up onto U.S. 280. The testing site was not affiliated with Grandview Medical Center, but being on adjacent property, traffic to the test site was potentially obstructing access to the hospital.

“That’s the state’s biggest hospital,” Record said. “We’re not going to take a chance on that happening.”

It quickly became clear another location would be better.

“We’re moving this testing site from the Grandview campus to the Grants Mill campus because it is a much larger and much better flowing traffic pattern,” said Schranz. “Every Sunday about 9,000 people go in and out of that facility, versus about 3,000 that come in and out of Grandview on Sundays. The traffic flow’s better, the access to the interstate is better. It’s just a much more efficient location.”

They began at the church’s Grandview campus because it is so close to the testing laboratory at Assurance Scientific, Schranz said. But the Grants Mill campus is only 15 minutes further away.

“We’re still very close to the laboratory,” Schranz said.

The unexpected logistical problems are part of a daily learning process, he said.

Plenty of test kits

“We have no idea how many people actually showed up” on Tuesday, Schranz said. “We tested as many as we could absolutely get on the property.”

There were plenty of test kits still available, he said.

“We have enough kits to do testing for more people than we physically have the doctors to approve the tests,” Schranz said. “The kits are not a restriction on how many people we can test. It’s literally the logistics of in and out that’s restricting what we can get physically get done in a day.”

People were grateful for the opportunity for drive-through testing, he said.

“Our goal is to get better and better at this and test more people every day,” Schranz said. “They’re just thankful they finally have a way to get tested.”

Schranz said the church did a radio broadcast for people waiting in line.

“As people come on the property, there’s a radio station that gives them instructions, as simple as the medical forms they’ll be asked to fill out, but also a phone number that they can call in for prayer,” he said. "This morning, within the first 30 minutes, 321 called in for prayer. We’re trying to not just not meet the physical and medical needs of people, we’re also trying to take care of people spiritually.”

Ten staff members from the 100-member staff at Christ Health Center were on site at the church campus on Tuesday, Record said. About 100 volunteers helped, many of them with clinical experience, plus 20 staff members from the Church of the Highlands and three staff members from Assurance Scientific, Record said.

‘Working like crazy’

“Now Assurance is working like crazy,” Record said. “Assurance is over there working into the wee hours of the night trying to turn these tests over.”

Record said that Alabama should be proud of the job Assurance Scientific has done.

“They are one of the leaders in the nation,” he said. “They need to be celebrated.”

While Record was working with Assurance Scientific in the Birmingham laboratory on Saturday, they discovered more COVID-19 cases than had been previously known about in Alabama, he said. The number of confirmed cases of COVID-19 cases in Alabama as of March 18 was 46, 23 of which were in Jefferson County, according to the state Department of Health.

“When nobody else could figure out how to test, when everybody else was still asking questions, they were implementing answers,” Record said. “They are a virology lab. This is what they do. As soon as COVID-19 appeared in China, they started developing tests.”