Calif. Fire Station to Open as Free COVID-19 Testing Site

East Bay Times

Officials said they plan to open a city fire station Monday as a site to test people for possible exposure to the COVID-19 virus.

In a statement Sunday, officials said the center at Hayward fire station No. 7, 28720 Huntwood Ave., will help to ease pressure at regional hospital emergency rooms seeking increased foot traffic.

The center will focus on testing first responders and healthcare workers, but its biggest purpose is to reinforce the importance of post-testing isolation, city staff said.

“Suppression, through isolation after testing, or SIT, as we call it, is an approach that has proven to be most effective in countries on the leading edge of this pandemic,” Hayward Fire Department Chief Garrett Contreras said.

Hayward Fire paramedics, supported by emergency medical technicians, will run the center everyday from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m., and it will be free to the public without city-resident, doctor-referral or immigration-status barriers.

Those who come will first be screened for illness, including specific symptoms such as fever, cough and shortness of breath, before receiving a nasal-cavity and throat-back swab. Test results are expected back within six hours, or next day at the latest, city staff said.

Menlo Park-based Avellino Lab USA, a gene-therapy and molecular-diagnostics firm, is partnering with the city to open the center, and plans to work with the city to open other testing sites around the Bay Area.

For more information, call its hotline at 510-583-4949 from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. seven days a week, or visit the city’s COVID-19 Web site at www.hayward-ca.gov/covid-19.