Officials push for more COVID testing sites in Glendale area

The Glendale and Ridgewood area has one of the highest COVID-19 positivity rates in Queens, and officials are pushing for more testing sites to be installed throughout the district.

The area’s seven-day positivity rate is currently over 16% with nearly 1,000 new cases, according to city health department data.

On Monday, Dec. 27, state Senator Joseph Addabbo, Assemblywoman Jenifer Rajkumar, Councilman Robert Holden and Councilwoman-elect Joann Ariola partnered to provide a free COVID-19 mobile testing site at the Woodhaven Business Improvement District, located at 89-07 Jamaica Ave., from 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. Rapid and PCR tests are available.

Holden’s office said that The Shops at Atlas Park would be used as a “micro” testing site on or around Jan. 1.

“With the holiday season upon us and the omicron variant surging, no one should be waiting in lines for hours to get tested,” Holden wrote in a Facebook post.

Kevin Ryan, a spokesperson for Holden, said that because much of their district is not accessible through public transportation, they are most concerned about seniors.

New York state broke its single-day record for a fourth day straight last week, reporting nearly 23,400 new COVID-19 cases overnight. Queens has a positivity rate of about 12%, with nearly 6,000 people testing positive on Dec. 25, according to state data. The new omicron variant makes up about 90% of all COVID-19 cases in New York City, the CDC reported.

Due to the high COVID-19 rates around Queens, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) deployed federal testing units to several neighborhoods in the borough, including Jackson Heights, East Elmhurst and Flushing. More mobile testing units will be available this week.

The mobile testing units are supplied by the CDC’s Increasing Community Access to Testing Team (ICATT) to meet the high demand for COVID-19 testing, which has reached record levels at more than 150,000 tests per day, according to NYC Test & Trace Corps.

Below are testing sites in or nearby Glendale and Ridgewood. Not all are affiliated with NYC Test & Trace Corps.