For the safety of our patients and staff, UW Medicine is proactively testing all patients admitted to our hospitals for coronavirus, regardless of whether they have symptoms or not.
What you need to know
If you need to be admitted to the hospital, you'll be tested for coronavirus even if you're not experiencing any signs or symptoms of COVID-19 infection.
Why we’re testing hospital patients
Since some people may have COVID-19 without symptoms (asymptomatic), we want to know the status of every patient in our hospitals so our team can safely care for them.
We can test patients at the time of hospital admission because of the quick turnaround times for our internal lab tests.
We continue testing at regular intervals throughout a patient's hospital stay. This is similar to other standard screening tests that are done to keep patients and staff safe, such as tests to screen for antibiotic-resistant bacteria.