City Quietly Starts Closing Coronavirus Testing Sites At Schools

ASTORIA, QUEENS — The city has quietly started disassembling COVID-19 testing sites located on school grounds in preparation for students' return to the classroom in September.

Nine testing sites will be taken down by Aug. 14 to enable NYC Health + Hospitals workers to clean and disinfect public school buildings before the start of the school year, spokespeople for the city's hospital system and the mayor's office told Patch.

That came as a surprise to Maria, a 28-year-old Astoria resident, who showed up at Long Island City High School on Thursday to get tested for the coronavirus before an upcoming trip to St. Croix.

She said she found the site, which opened in June and was run by the emergency relief nonprofit CORE, on the city's map of testing locations the night before.

"This location was still showing up, and it was the closest one to us," Maria, who declined to give her last name, said. "No one said it was shutting down."

Maria was among four people seeking COVID-19 tests who showed up at the school within a span of minutes Thursday morning, only to be turned away by a team of construction workers dismantling the testing infrastructure.

The other eight testing sites that will close are Bronxwood Preparatory Academy and P.S. X017/I.S. 184 in The Bronx; South Shore High School in Brooklyn; Mosaic Preparatory Academy in Manhattan; P.S. 81 Jean Paul Richter, Leavitt Field and Long Island City High School in Queens; and P.S. 21 Margaret Emery-Elm Park and Tottenville High School in Staten Island.

Maria is unlikely to be the only New Yorker caught by surprise.

The closures are briefly mentioned in a letter on the NYC Department of Education's website but have not otherwise been publicized; the city's announcements of new testing sites at schools, like the one at Long Island City High School, made no mention of them.

City Hall spokesperson Avery Cohen said all the testing sites will be replaced, though locations for the replacement sites have not been released.

"There are still ample testing sites across the city," Cohen wrote in response to an emailed list of questions.

In Astoria, construction workers tearing down the Long Island City High School testing facility redirected people to a NYC Health + Hospitals testing site at 51-30 Northern Blvd. a mile and a half away.

One worker, who declined to give his name because he was not authorized to speak to reporters, said, "As quick as they go up, that's as quick as they go down."