Sunset Park Sees Spike In Coronavirus, Expands Testing: Mayor
SUNSET PARK, BROOKLYN — A "flood" of coronavirus test and trace efforts will descend on Sunset Park after a spike in the coronavirus cases was found in the neighborhood, the mayor announced.
Health officials said Wednesday that they are doubling down on testing in the Brooklyn neighborhood after 228 positive cases of COVID-19 were found there in the last two weeks.
The positive cases were found after the city's Test and Trace Corps conducted 3,300 coronavirus tests when noticing an uptick in Sunset Park's ZIP code, Health Commissioner Dave Chokshi said.
"The ZIP code-wide rate was like the beep of a metal detector that told us where to dig," Chokshi said.
The 228 positive results out of 3,300 tests means the neighborhood has nearly a 7 percent positive testing rate. New York City's overall positive test rate was 1 percent as of Wednesday.
Health officials are still unsure what caused the uptick. Not all of those who were tested in the neighborhood live in Sunset Park, Mayor Bill de Blasio said.
The hope is that increased testing and tracing contacts for those who test positive will help prevent a further spike.
Of 104 people who tested positive as of July 29, 80 of them completed the Test and Trace Corps intake form and gave 130 contacts, the Corps' Chief Equity Officer Annabel Palma said. About 82 percent of those contacts were people who lived with the person who tested positive, Palma said.
The ramped-up testing will include at least two new test sites as well as calls and visits to nearly all of the 38,000 households in Sunset Park, officials said.
The outreach will come with a simple message for the neighborhood: everyone needs to get tested, de Blasio said.
"Our idea is to saturate Sunset Park over the next few days and reach as many people in the community as we possibly can," he said.
The extra test sites include the Brooklyn Herald Gospel Center and a pop-up at the corner of 44th Street and Sixth Avenue.
The Gospel Center site will be open from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. on Saturday and Sunday and the pop-up site will, starting Wednesday, run on weekdays from 10 a.m. through 4 p.m. until next Friday.
There will also be expanded testing at the Brooklyn Army Terminal and more sites announced in the coming days, officials said.
Chokshi said a similar effort was launched previously in Tremont in the Bronx, though he did not specify how many cases were found there.
This article originally appeared on the Park Slope Patch
