NEW YORK (1010 WINS) – New York City is opening nearly two dozen more city-run COVID-19 testing sites this week as demand for tests grows, and as officials expect a surge in cases in the weeks ahead due to the omicron variant.
“It’s going to be a very challenging few weeks,” Mayor Bill de Blasio said at his daily briefing Monday. “We’re going to see a really fast upsurge in cases, we’re going to see a lot of New Yorkers affected by omicron.”
De Blasio said health officials in the city were hopeful that the surge in cases would only last a few weeks before trailing off. He said omicron “moves very fast” but also appears to cause less severe infections.
“Thank God, based on everything we’ve seen so far, the cases are more mild than we’ve experienced previously,” the mayor said, urging people to get vaccinated, or boosted if eligible, so hospitals don’t become overwhelmed.
De Blasio said another 23 city-run sites will open this week to meet the surge in demand.
The new sites will include 20 brick-and-mortar locations, as well as three mobile sites. They’ll bring the total number of city-run sites, at places like schools and libraries, to 112.
De Blasio said the city also planned to improve oversight at all private vendor test sites by sending supervisors from the Test and Trace Corps “to make sure there’s high quality and consistency, and to make sure the hours are as stated.”
New Yorkers can find a site near them at nyc.gov/covidtest.
Long lines have been a regular sight at testing locations across the five boroughs in recent days.
The mayor said 130,000 tests are now being done daily at city-run sites—double the number of daily tests just three weeks ago.
“That’s how fast things are ramping up. This intense effort will keep growing as long as we need it to grow to address the demand,” he said.
De Blasio said at-home testing will be another “key piece to this puzzle” but that it’s “another area where we’ve got to get a lot more supply to meet the level of demand we’re experiencing now.”
Over the past few days, New York state has broken multiple records for single-day cases, with nearly 22,500 cases reported Sunday—the most since the pandemic began. There were over 12,400 cases in New York City alone.
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