CDC To Open Mass COVID Testing Site In New Jersey

NEW JERSEY — This week — amid the highest-ever case numbers recorded since the pandemic first began — the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) announced it will open a mass coronavirus testing site in New Jersey.

A location for the site has not been determined, but New Jersey Department of Health officials said Tuesday they are currently working with the CDC to determine where the surge testing site will be located.

Stay tuned for a location. The massive new NJ test site is part of the CDC's "COVID-19 Surge Response effort," which partners with pharmacies and commercial laboratories to provide free testing resources to underserved communities.

This comes at a time when town-run COVID test sites are being overrun and it is nearly impossible to find a rapid COVID test in stores. You can find a place near you that offers rapid COVID testing by putting your ZIP code in here: https://covid19.nj.gov/pages/t...

In New York state, Gov. Kathy Hochul announced Friday she will open 13 new COVID-19 testing sites across the state by the end of the month.

It is not immediately clear how or why the CDC chose New Jersey as a state that needs a surge COVID testing site, but cases are indeed surging in the state: On Saturday, Dec. 25 New Jersey logged 16,626 new positives, the highest ever recorded since the pandemic first began, according to the state's COVID dashboard.

Hospitalizations are also creeping up again, too: As of Monday, 2,979 people are hospitalized with COVID, returning to hospitalization peaks not seen since February.

Officials did say there is much more testing occurring now than earlier in the pandemic. So far the omicron variant generally appears to produce very mild symptoms. Many people who are testing positive do not even report having symptoms.

Many stores sold out of rapid at-home COVID tests and stores such as Walmart, Walgreens and CVS are limiting how many tests customers can buy at a time.

Many town-run testing sites are also being overrun, as Middletown Township just announced Monday that its COVID testing site by the train station reached capacity and could not accommodate any further testing for the day. The test site run by Ocean County also just shut down early Tuesday afternoon, saying they had reached capacity.

Gov. Phil Murphy, who is currently on vacation in Costa Rica, said he welcomes the mass testing site.

“This testing site will be an invaluable means to continue mitigating the spread of the pandemic. I thank our federal partners for their continued support and commitment to keeping New Jerseyans healthy," said Murphy on Monday.

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This article originally appeared on the Woodbridge Patch