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Metro

NYC launches 10 new coronavirus testing centers

By
Nolan Hicks
Published April 17, 2020
Updated April 17, 2020, 6:42 p.m. ET

Mayor de Blasio announced Friday that 10 new coronavirus testing sites will be opening across the five boroughs as the city slowly expands its efforts to track the pandemic and tackle massive disparities in who is being checked for the illness.

“There is no way to get back to normal without a huge amount of testing — testing on a citywide level, something we have never had, we’ve never seen since the beginning of this crisis,” de Blasio said as he announced the new facilities, acknowledging they will only make a small dent in the testing shortfall.

“But we still need help from the federal government if we’re really going to have the testing on the scale necessary to get us to the point where there’s [many] fewer cases of COVID-19, where it becomes a rarity,” he added.

The new facilities will provide nearly 6,000 additional tests per week with hopes to expand them further, officials said.

De Blasio’s rollout comes a week after he promised additional testing in response to growing criticism about the access the Big Apple’s minority communities have to healthcare as the pandemic exacts an extraordinary toll on black and brown New Yorkers.

Stats released by the city Health Department showed that Hispanic, Caribbean and African-American New Yorkers are dying from COVID-19 at twice the rate of white New Yorkers.

Gotham Health Brooklyn testing site coronavirus
People stand in line outside of the COVID-19 testing site at Gotham Health in Brooklyn.AFP via Getty Images

Those disparities extend to testing access, too, an examination of testing data by The Post revealed. It showed that more than two-thirds of the 30 ZIP codes with the highest per-capita rates of testing were either whiter or wealthier — and frequently both — than the city average population.

Five of the new testing center locations announced by Hizzoner will be located at facilities operated by the city’s public hospital system in each borough.

Three of them — Gotham Health in Brooklyn’s East New York, Gotham Health in The Bronx’s Morrisania and Vanderbilt Health Center in Staten Island’s Clifton — opened Friday.

The remaining two new centers at the Sydenham Family Health Center in Harlem and Queens Hospital in Jamaica are slated to open Monday.

De Blasio said these new testing centers would focus on checking seniors with preexisting conditions and residents in their surrounding neighborhoods.

Anyone seeking an appointment must call 311.

Additionally, City Hall announced it was partnering with a powerful local labor union, 1199SEIU, to provide another five testing facilities in each borough.

Those sites will test essential employees including those who care for the elderly, “frontline” union members and senior citizens with preexisting conditions.

Individuals meeting those critera can call 1-888-ONEMED-1 (1-888-663-6331) to book an appointment.

Officials said that the Queens and Brooklyn sites were already open.