The Ohio Department of Health is offering free COVID-19 testing to individuals who believe they may have contracted the Noval Coronavirus.

As part of a statewide program, numerous walk-up and drive-up testing opportunities have been offered to help provide greater testing capacity in counties with a surging number of positive cases.

On Friday, December 18 multiple state agencies, including the Ohio National Guard, will be at the Muskingum County Fairgrounds to help facilitate the testing of both symptomatic and asymptomatic individuals.

As part of Ohio Governor Mike DeWine’s COVID-19 Minority Health Strike Force, which is tasked with ensuring equity in healthcare for all Ohioans, the working group issued guidance on how to better offer ubiquity of testing to all citizens.

That interim report, issued in May, addressed the need for an extra capacity of testing for cases of the Coronavirus in communities of color and other high-risk/high-incident areas.

As a response, the state announced the pop-up testing initiative, which allows for the testing of a large number of individuals, which might not have otherwise been possible at other facilities.

During a press conference earlier in the month, when referring to another pop-up testing site, DeWine called the service essential to providing quick and accurate testing of individuals, at a time when the state is experiencing a yet-ever-increasing exponential spread of the virus.

According to the Zanesville-Muskingum County Health Department, no appointment is necessary and only symptomatic individuals will need to be quarantined after being tested.

The service will be available from 9:30 a.m. until 3:30 p.m., Friday, at the Muskingum County Fairgrounds located at 1300 Pershing Road in Zanesville.