ALBANY COUNTY — “We are learning this thing literally from the inside out,” said Jonathan Halpert, M.D. of the coronavirus disease 2019.

Halpert, who opened an urgent-care center in Guilderland’s Hamilton Square a year ago, is now offering diagnostic testing for COVID-19 there.

The county is providing personal protective equipment for Halpert’s staff and helping with fitting masks properly.

“As a community-based health partner, we wanted to do our part,” said Halpert at the county’s press briefing on Tuesday.

Halpert has just started the testing but, he said, “We hope to dramatically expand it.”

Priority 1 Urgent Care is located at the corner of routes 20 and 155 — highways that make it easy for residents not just of Guilderland but also of New Scotland, Berne, Knox, Westerlo, rural Schenectady County, and northern Schoharie County to be tested, said Halpert. The center is also a stop on public bus routes.

The test consists of taking a nasal swab, which is then analyzed. Halpert said it was quick and comfortable and stressed that his center “maintains strict standards of sanitation.”

Unlike the state’s testing site at the University at Albany uptown campus or the Colonie site run by Rite Aid and the federal government in Colonie, Halpert’s is not a drive-through site. Nor is it a walk-in site like the four mobile sites the county and the Whitney M. Young Jr.  Health Center are running in at-risk neighborhoods — this week, with three in Albany and one in Cohoes.

Rather, Halpert’s site is an urgent-care clinic. A patient comes in “with a physical complaint, be it a cough, a sore throat, a headache,” said Halpert. That patient is then evaluated by staff and tested.

“We have a very low threshold for testing,” he said as the center is using the new guidelines from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which includes far more symptoms than just a fever or cough.

Testing will be reimbursed by the patient’s health insurance, and will be done by appointment only after the patient is screened over the phone, Halpert said; the number is 518-867-8040.

Urgent-care centers, Halpert said, are “uniquely positioned” to help with COVID-9. New York State has about 800 urgent-care centers, with about 30 in Albany County, he said.

Patients, Halpert said, don’t have to go downtown to a large hospital but can, instead, get “relatively sophisticated health care” where they live and work.

“We’re acute-care providers,” Halpert said of urgent-care centers, which offer “on-demand health care.”

Halpert has been working in urgent care since 2007, he told The Enterprise last year after opening his Guidlerand business. He served as an urgent-care medical director first with the PrimeCare Physicians Group and then with St. Peter’s Health Partners, which absorbed PrimeCare. 

Prior to that, Halpert said, he worked in the emergency department of St. Peter’s Hospital. 

Halpert is a founding member and director of the North East Regional Urgent Care Association, he said, and through that has been involved in urgent-care and health policy planning and administration.

Lately, Halpert said on Tuesday, his center has seen patients who normally wouldn’t have come in to see a doctor but, because of mild symptoms in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, they have decided to be looked at.

Halpert said he has seen a range of patients from those with mild symptoms to those who are seriously ill with the disease.

“We’re ready,” Halpert concluded. “We want to be part of the solution … We want to keep all of our employees … We’re resolved to fight this thing to the end.”