SLO County Public Health offers free rapid COVID tests at one-day pop-up event
In the midst of a widespread shortage of coronavirus tests, the San Luis Obispo County Public Health Department is administering free COVID-19 rapid tests in Grover Beach.
The Public Health Department is providing COVID-19 rapid tests to the first 150 people who come to the Dec. 23 pop-up testing event at Ramona Gardens Park in Grover Beach, according to a news release from the public health department.
The testing event goes from 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. on Thursday, the day before Christmas Eve, according to the release. Results will be available about 15 minutes after testing.
“COVID-19 testing is more important than ever as cases are increasing and we’ve identified the highly contagious Omicron variant here in SLO County,” said Dr. Penny Borenstein, county health officer, in the release. “Please take time to ‘know before you go or gather’ this holiday season so you can enjoy the company of family and friends more safely.”
The first COVID-19 case from the Omicron variant was identified in San Luis Obispo County on Friday. The local case comes as coronavirus cases in the United States shift from the Delta variant to the highly transmissible Omicron variant.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) warned of a COVID-19 test shortage back in September, according to a news release from the agency.
On Dec. 6, the CDC recommended individuals self-test for COVID-19 before gathering with people outside their household amid the spread of Omicron.
That new threat coupled with constraints on testing availability prompted President Joe Biden to announce a plan to purchase 500 million COVID-19 tests that can be shipped to Americans free of charge, according to a statement from the White House.
The Omicron variant was identified by scientists in South Africa on Nov. 24, according to the CDC. By Dec. 1, the first Omicron case in the United States was detected. It took about two and a half weeks for the Omicron variant to overtake Delta as the dominant variant driving COVID-19 cases nationally, according to CDC data.
