Alpha Xpress Labs Offering Quick And Efficient COVID Tests For Travelers At Tulsa International Airport

Alpha Xpress Labs has been offering rapid COVID-19 testing at the Tulsa International Airport for more than a year now and will soon be providing additional services.

Some people get tests a couple days before their flights, while others drop in a few hours before take-off, but Vice President Nathan Gates said a trend he's noticed: many of the folks he's servicing are traveling abroad.

Alpha Xpress Labs has administered more than 10,000 COVID tests to travelers and employees at the airport since opening at the beginning of 2021. Of those, VP Nathan Gates said nearly 195 have been positive and 79 of those were in January of this year when the Omicron variant stifled the states.

"Flights cancel, different things might, the destinations might change for test type... is the number one thing that we see, so depending on the severity of cases in their destination, it might depend on if they need a PCR or antigen test or no test at all," said Gates. 

He said the need for testing ebbs and flows.

"It's mirroring the travel season," said Nathan Gates, VP of Alpha Medical Laboratory.

Gates said workers are busiest around holidays, adding they completed 2,200 tests around Christmas and New Year's with 96 positive tests for that time period. 

"Anytime you're traveling from point A to point B you're gonna be in a smaller concentration or a larger concentration of people. We want to make sure we have the most forefront testing options available to limit the exposure," said Gates. 

Recently, he's seen a steady decline in COVID cases, with close to 400 tests this month and zero positives to report. However, Gates said he's watching the BA.2 variant daily.

"We've learned a lot. We were also on the medical side with nursing homes, so we're learning from there that we can bring some technologies here," said Gates. 

The lab has improved its Antigen testing platform using six machines with the latest technology for detecting different COVID variants.

Gates said this has provided more accurate results within 25 minutes.

He said they've added Nucleic Acid Amplification Tests which have a heightened sensitivity to the virus.

"We recently added another international travel accepted NAAT platform called Molecular testing by Isothermal amplification. This is performed on the Abbott ID machines and we have invested in 6 of these machines. This is offered as an express option (less than an hour), or there is a cheaper option to receive results within 24 hours," said Gates. 

Gates said beginning in April, Alpha Xpress Labs will be able to send results to passengers quicker and more efficiently.

"We are launching our new HIPAA compliant texting platform to send results directly to the customers phone. This will make it much easier to communicate with the busy traveler regarding their COVID results," said Gates. 

He said they'll also start to offer vaccines and booster shots next month.

"Our lab (Alpha) was recently granted status by CMS as a 'Mass Vaccination Provider'," said Gates.

Click the links for more information about Alpha Xpress Labs and COVID-19 testing at Tulsa International Airport.

https://www.tulsaairports.com/news/covid-19/

https://testwithalpha.com/