The testing, which is being conducted at 15740 South Outer Forty Road, outside of a Mercy telehealth building where patients are not seen, resumes Sunday. Before arriving, people must call Mercy’s COVID-19 Clinical Support Line at 314-251-0500.

‘Going to take time’

Experts say accelerating similar testing campaigns is vital, on a regional scale and beyond.

“We do not know enough about how many people in the United States are currently affected with this virus,” said Dr. Sarah George, a St. Louis University associate professor of infectious diseases, allergy, and immunology, in an interview Friday with the Post-Dispatch. “We’re missing a lot of cases because of inadequate testing. There’s probably a lot more out there than we know.... For every case you see, there’s multiple cases that you’re not seeing.”

The rhythms of day-to-day life will be different in the short-term future, George said, as society tries to grasp the scope of the problem — a process that she expects will consume the next several weeks.