GREENVILLE COUNTY, S.C. (WSPA) – Beginning Monday, Greenville County Schools is offering free flu and COVID-19 testing to students, employees, and, for the first time, household contacts.

One swab, two tests.

“We’re the largest school district in the state of South Carolina, the 46th largest in the nation,” said Tim Waller, director of media relations at Greenville County Schools. “When you have that many students, employees and then their household members, we want to make sure that people have an easy and free opportunity to go out and get tested.”

The testing will be held Monday through Friday from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. and Sunday from 2 p.m. to 5 p.m. at the Fountain Inn High School student parking lot, the MT Anderson Support Center in the Southside High School football field parking lot, and Northside Park in the Otter Creek Water Park parking area.

The wait time for results is also new this year taking less than an hour versus last year’s 24-hour wait.

“Last year we had a lot of people concerned about waiting for the test to come back the next day, now you can get them the same day and also the test is just as easy as it’s ever been,” said Connor Carroll, team leader with Mako Medical. “Since we’ve been doing it here it’s just a very gentle, very shallow nose swab. It just takes 5 seconds and then you’re all done.”

Mako Medical is conducting the tests and is a part of a program Greenville County Schools is given through state health authority.

“They [South Carolina Department of Health and Environmental Control] are funding this program which enables us to hire a third-party company, Mako Medical services, which is to set up at three locations to offer this to the public,” said Waller.

Registration is required and can be done on-site or ahead of time through the school district website.

“It’s always good to know like what you have so you can know what you’re spreading to other people and try and minimize that,” said Carroll.

For Greenville County Schools, other people is a lot of people.

“Keep in mind we have about 79,000 students this year and 11,000 employees, so we’re talking about a lot of people.”