SAN ANTONIO – Some San Antonio residents who turned out to get tested for COVID-19 at two new walk-up sites Thursday were turned away due to huge demand for the tests.
People started lining up at 8 a.m., two hours before testing was scheduled to begin, in the parking lot of Las Palmas Library and at Woodlawn Lake Park.
The test was free and no appointment was required, which contributed to the huge turnout.
But the 150 test kits health officials had on hand at each site quickly were used and people were asked to come back Friday or Saturday.
City of San Antonio to open 2 free, walk-up COVID-19 testing locations
“It’s a good problem to have. It just shows there’s a need ... that the community is concerned,” said Chris Velasquez, Mobile Integrated Healthcare Program manager, for the city of San Antonio.
Velasquez said the number of tests provided was determined based on the number of appointments at drive-thru sites. And since the walk-up testing is a pilot program, officials didn’t know how many people would show up.
“We learned that it was a conservative estimate,” he said.
Velasquez said a meeting will be held Thursday night to determine how many more tests will be needed for the next two days.
COVID-19, the respiratory disease caused by the new virus, stands for coronavirus disease 2019. The disease first appeared in late December 2019 in Wuhan, China, but spread around the world in early 2020, causing the World Health Organization to declare a pandemic in March. The first case confirmed in the U.S. was in mid-January and the first case confirmed in San Antonio was in mid-February.
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