HARTFORD, Conn. (WTIC Radio) - While the State of Connecticut waits for its shipment of COVID-19 rapid at-home tests, the city of Hartford began distributing its own allocation of at-home test kits Thursday morning.
Governor Ned Lamont announced Wednesday that the shipment of at-home rapid tests were delayed due to shipping and warehouse issues outside of the State's control.
However, the city of Hartford purchased 10,000 of its own COVID-19 at-home test kits. According to city officials, 8,000 were made available citywide Thursday morning at seven different locations.
While visiting the Arroyo Center in Pope Park, City Health Director Liany Arroyo said everything was going smoothly at all the different sites, even though the site at the Arroyo Center opened a bit late.
Traffic around the area made it a bit difficult for staff to get the test kits to the site at around 10:00 that morning, most of which was due to people trying to get to the site, staff members said. However, with the help of city police, the site was turned into a drive-through and operations ran without issue, Arroyo said.
Within the first hour, the Arroyo Center site had given out about half of its 1,000 test kit supply, Arroyo said.
By 2:45 p.m., Hartford officials announced that four of its seven locations had exhausted their supplies and closed early, including the Arroyo Center testing site and the Hartford Library Downtown, Camp Field and Albany Avenue branches.
Meanwhile, other cities and towns had to cancel or postpone their distribution plans due to the state's shipment delay.
The city of New London announced the cancellation of its distribution scheduled for Thursday, along with the town of Westport.
The towns of West Hartford and Newington also cancelled their distributions scheduled for Friday.
Many municipal and local health officials said it is unclear when the state's shipment will be arriving, but they'll be working to distribute the test kits as soon as they arrive.
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