Cheektowaga, N.Y. (WBEN) - "I'm very happy, because my whole family has COVID, so I have other people that have to test."
Residents of Cheektowaga lined up early in their vehicles on Monday to get their hands on free at-home COVID-19 testing kits at Cheektowaga Town Park on Harlem Road.
The drive-thru testing kit distribution site was originally slated to open at 12 p.m. EST and run all the way through 4 p.m. EST or until the town ran out of testing kits. However, with the amount of people showing up early, officials opened the drive-thru ahead of schedule.
"We had traffic control set up at about 9 a.m. EST, and we had people lining up at that point," said Cheektowaga's Chief of Police, Brian Gould. "By about 11 a.m. EST, traffic was backing up on to Harlem Road, just lining up, so we had no choice for safety concerns other than just to start getting the cars through."
Traffic on Harlem Road was still backed up quite a bit around 12 p.m. EST, with hold ups extending past the intersection of Harlem Road and Genesee St.
The flow of traffic through the lines moved pretty smoothly, with people waiting 15-20 minutes, at most, to receive the maximum of two test kits per-household. According to Gould, the town issued approximately 3,000 at-home COVID-19 testing kits to their residents.
"We know that people are working during the day, can't make it here. We know traffic is backed up on Harlem Road a little bit. We're doing our best to try to keep everyone happy, and so far I think we're doing OK with it," Gould said.
When chatting with some residents that came out to get their at-home COVID-19 testing kits, people seemed relatively pleased with the process and how everything moved along.
"This was good, actually pretty quick. I was only in line for 20 minutes," said Nick, who went out to get his two at-home testing kits.
As for Paul, he was more than happy to get his at-home COVID-19 testing kits on Monday.
"It's too cold to do anything else," he said from his truck.
Where there may have been some confusion for some residents on Monday was this drive-thru did not supply residents with the KN95 masks. However, Gould said they are available for residents wishing to have that extra protection from COVID-19.
"Anybody can come in to the front desk of our police station. We're handing them out there," he explained. "Just walk in, and we'll give them right to you. There's no lines, it's quick and easy. We thought about trying to add it to this process, but we knew of the traffic problems here that we just wanted to get the kits out now."
Despite the traffic issues that were present on Monday, Gould was very fortunate to have had a chance to see how other towns in Western New York handled similar events over the weekend so the town could be prepared for the heavy turnout.
"We've ran other events in this park, other drive-thru events, so we know we could stack 400 cars in the park," Gould said. "We know where we need cars for traffic control. ... We know that some people couldn't make it here, so we'll keep that in mind if we get future distribution of these to do something at other times of the day to hit other people."
It was shortly after 12:45 p.m. EST when the town had completely run out of testing kits to give out to residents.
