Chambana Sun

People arriving in the Carle Foundation Hospital emergency room expecting treatment for flu-like symptoms will get more than they bargained for.

Dr. Robert Healy, the Carle Foundation Hospital chief medical quality officer, said those who test negative for influenza will receive complimentary testing for the coronavirus using oral or nasal swab samples. The hospital began the process earlier this month.

Like the flu, people with coronavirus complain of coughing, fever and body aches.

“What public health wants to know, what we want to know: Is there more of this virus out there than we know of?” Healy told the News-Gazette.

The evaluations are being conducted within the hospital's sentinel surveillance program, which will measure virus occurrences and monitor the stability or change in health levels of the population, according to the National Center for Biology Information.

“We certainly expect to have cases in our community,” Champaign-Urbana Public Health District Administrator Julie Pryde told the News-Gazette. “We don’t know when. But if we don’t test, we have no cases.”