CVS Health to offer coronavirus test at 2 Sacramento-area pharmacies’ drive-thru windows

Cathie Anderson
·2 min read

Starting Friday, CVS Health will be offering up to 50 tests a day for COVID-19 at drive-thru windows in two of its capital region pharmacies, at 8101 Greenback Lane in Fair Oaks and at 1350 Florin Road in Sacramento.

“Patients will drive up and will utilize our drive-thru window or a curbside approach,” said Sharon Vitti, senior vice president of CVS Health. “The testing will not be within the store. Patients will collect a specimen and that specimen will be sent off site for processing, so the results will be available in two to four days.”

All patients must register in advance, and as part of that process, CVS will determine whether they meet guidelines for eligibility set by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

No tests will be performed in the store. At the drive-thru window, CVS employees will observe each patient as they swab their nasal passages to ensure they’re doing it correctly.

Vitti, the president of CVS’ MinuteClinic division, said the company’s strategy is to have multiple sites offering a small volume of tests. The company announced in April that it had plans to open 1,000 curbside or drive-thru testing sites around the nation, and it has already identified 350 of them, 14 of them in California.

So far, only 50 of the CVS sites have opened, and they are all on the East Coast. Besides California, the company plans drive-thru testing sites in Arizona, Connecticut, Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Indiana, Louisiana, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania and Texas

The goal, CVS officials said, is to perform 1.5 million tests each month. All patients must be tested in their home state.

“As we looked at where to put the 1,000 test sites,” Vitti said, “we were very selective and thoughtful about making sure that we put them in different communities, especially those that don’t have as much access to health care.

The company measured need by checking the CDC’s Social Vulnerability Index, which tracks such census variables as poverty, lack of access to transportation, and crowded housing. These factors tend to make it harder for a community to prepare for and recover from disease outbreaks and other hazardous events.

As governors around the nation slowly ease stay-home orders, government and health care organizations are attempting to expand the availability of testing for the coronavirus.