City Offers Free COVID Testing At Forest Hills Park As Cases Spike

FOREST HILLS, QUEENS — As the city battles its latest wave of COVID-19 infections, neighbors in Forest Hills can now get tested for the virus free of charge while visiting a local park.

A pop-up mobile testing site run by NYC Health and Hospitals is offering PCR and rapid antigen testing at MacDonald Park from 8 a.m. to 7 p.m. daily between Monday July 25 and next Sunday.

The tests — which are available for neighbors ages four and up — are free, confidential and don't require insurance.

As of Monday, New York City's test positivity rate is just over 14 percent with over 4,000 people testing positive per-day — the worst spike in the area since January's Omicron peak, fueled this time by the highly contagious BA.5 variant. The positivity rate is slightly higher in Forest Hill's 11375 ZIP code, where cases during the week of July 16 were just under 16 percent.

Experts, though, assume the true number of infections is as much as 10 times higher, with many at-home tests going unreported, The New York Times reported.

Amid this sixth wave, Mayor Eric Adams cut back on brick-and-mortar PCR and rapid testing sites and scrapped the city's color-coded COVID alert system — choices he's defended amid criticism.

"We're not going to hold onto something that's an old weapon merely because we had it," he said earlier this month, defending the choice to eliminate the COVID alert system.

Instead, the administration has shifted its focus to COVID-19 treatment options — offering access to antiviral medicine at some mobile testing sites and launching a new 24-hour treatment hotline.

It's also prioritized the distribution of at-home COVID tests over brick-and-mortar testing sites.

"It's clear that New Yorkers prefer the reliability, the convenience, and the immediate results provided by at-home tests," Adams said a couple weeks ago after announcing the expansion of a citywide at-home testing kit distribution program.

Many New Yorkers, though, have shrugged off the new COVID wave altogether, reacting mostly with indifference to the rising case count, outlets including The New York Times reported.

While the virus is no longer taking center stage for many, new health concerns are still on the horizon: Over the weekend the World Health Organization declared monkeypox a global emergency, and Rockland County is now contending with a polio outbreak.

For more information about the COVID-19 testing site at MacDonald Park check out the NYC Health and Hospitals website here.