Maya McFadden photos
Mayor swabs himself at now-closed CVS testing site …
… and downtown passerby get swabbed on Green, where a new weekly testing site will soon open.
New Haven has lost another Covid-19 drive-through testing site on Long Wharf, and will gain a new Covid-19 walk-up testing site on the Green.
On Saturday, the pharmaceutical and healthcare giant CVS closed its rapid testing site at 60 Sargent Dr.
The move comes two and a half months after CVS and the state first opened the large-scale, drive-through testing site at the former Gateway Community College campus on April 17.
“As we have greatly expanded our testing capacity through a more efficient and accessible network of 1,400 store-based drive-thru testing sites, we decided to wind down operations at our five large-scale, rapid testing sites, including the testing site in New Haven,” CVS Senior Director, Corporate Communications Joe Goode told the Independent by email Tuesday morning.
He wrote that CVS still has 27 different testing sites in Connecticut. The closest one to New Haven is at 355 Campbell Ave. in West Haven. Click here to find a complete list of currently open CVS drive-through testing sites.
Goode said that CVS does not currently plan to provide Covid-19 testing at its downtown New Haven pharmacy at 123 Church St. because that site does not have a drive-through window.
As for the local CVS sites at 215 Whalley Ave. and 1150 Whalley Ave., which do have drive-through windows, Goode said, “We continue to monitor demand for testing, and evaluate where we can deliver our services. However, we have nothing to announce related to the locations” on Whalley.
The CVS drive-through testing site on Long Wharf is the second in as many months to close up shop. Yale New Haven Hospital closed its drive-through testing site at 150 Sargent Dr. in May, and has yet to open a planned new testing site at the former Strong School location on Orchard Street. YNHH representatives have said in past updates that the Strong School site should open in early July.
(Update: YNHH Senior Vice President Vin Petrini told the Independent Tuesday afternoon that the hospital is “finalizing details with the City for activating the Strong School site with the hope of opening in July.” In the meantime, he wrote, YNHH has purchased three new testing vehicles that will be located at various points in the city starting around July 15. The first site will be at 1471 Whalley Ave. The vehicle will be located in the Walgreen’s and YNHH Draw Station parking lot. Other sites are still under review.)
Mayor Justin Elicker said that the closing of the CVS testing location on Sargent Drive is a bit of a mixed bag. On the one hand, that was the only Covid-19 testing site in town that provided same-day results. On the other hand, he said, CVS’s tests were not “deep nasal swabs” and had a higher rate of false negatives.
Thomas Breen photo
Getting swabbed at the Day Street Park site.
Elicker said that the city is still running a walk-up testing site in Day Street Park with Murphy Medical Associates on Mondays and Thursdays, 12 p.m. to 5 p.m.
Those nasopharnygeal swabs reach further up the nose and are more accurate, he said. And he said that the turnaround time for testing results at that location is down to a day or two, now that the city and Murphy have resolved a tech glitch that previously caused delays of up to a week or two.
In addition to the Day Street Park testing site, Fair Haven Community Health Care is still running its walk-up testing site at 374 Grand Ave. in Fair Haven and Cornell Scott Hill Health Center is still running its walk-up testing site at 226 Dixwell Ave. in the Dixwell neighborhood.
New Site On Green
Maya McFadden photo
Sen. Blumenthal gets tested on the Green in May.
Elicker said that the city and Murphy Medical Associates will be adding a new regular weekly testing site to the city’s testing map starting Wednesday: one that will be located by the flagpole on the Green downtown. It will be open from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. on Wednesdays.
“We’re trying to bring the testing to the people,” he said. The mayor noted that the one testing pop-up that the city and Murphy hosted on the Green in May saw a big turnout.
Elicker said that the city will be focusing on doing testing pop-ups in other locations throughout the city on Tuesdays and Fridays.
Getting swabbed at Bowen Field.
He cited a recent testing pop-up at Bowen Field that took place in conjunction with a food pantry as one such example of bringing testing to parts of the city that do not currently have permanent testing sites available.
The mayor also said that the city will no longer be doing regular Covid-19 testing at Lincoln Bassett School and at Hill Central School because of low turnout at those locations.
As of Tuesday, the city has 2,696 confirmed positive Covid-19 cases and 114 related fatalities.
Click here for more information about New Haven Covid-19 testing sites.
So with CVS and YNHH opting out, city residents need to walk to Fair Haven or up Dixwell - or wait for a few hours on (what is it? Oh yeah) Tuesday or Thursday afternoon. I do hope the mayor is able to set up a daily testing site on or near the Green! Because we are not out of the woods yet...