BLM March could bring uptick in COIVD-19 cases

Increased coronavirus cases could be seen in Lane County as a result of the BLM march.

Thousand people in one place... is what we've been warned against now for months.

Sunday's march was the largest gathering we've seen in the area... in a long time.

Kezi 9 news reporter julian mininsohn talked to public health officials about the potential health risks and if they are prepared for an uptick in cases.

I'm at alton baker park.

The site where the rally ended on sunday.

Only on sunday it was full of thousands of people in close proximity to each other -- which has raised some health concerns.

I spoke with lane county senior public health officer dr. patrick luedtke and he said we could see an slight uptick in coronavirus cases in the coming weeks as a result of a large-scale gathering of that magnitude.

Luedtke says they're prepared if there ends up being a large number of new cases.

"the testing that's actually done in lane county, we can't do thousands of cases.

But we have 17 labs that are reporting to us.

A large number of those samples will be sent to out of state laboratories.

All of those labs together we can get the testing done that we need to."

But we really want more testing locally."

The big difference between local and out-of-state testing is local test resutls come back within a day.

Results at one of those bigger labs don't come back for three to five days.

Coming