With San Antonio in the midst of its second major upswing in coronavirus cases, a nonprofit provider of asymptomatic testing is lengthening its hours at three locations.
Starting Nov. 30, San Antonio-based Community Labs will offer testing from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. at the AT&T Center (Gate C, Lot 2), 1 AT&T Center Parkway; from 8 a.m. to 6 p.m. at Cuellar Community Center, 5626 San Fernando St.; and from 8 a.m. to 6 p.m. at Ramirez Community Center, 1011 Gillette Blvd.
Community Labs has been offering testing from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. at all three locations since early October.
The front-nostril PCR test is free and intended for people who show no symptoms. It requires no appointment or proof of insurance. Participants gather the sample themselves by inserting the swab into the front of each nostril and circling for five seconds. Results are typically returned within 24 hours. The test is a molecular test, also called a PCR test, with a positive result indicating that the virus’s genetic material has been detected.
The lengthened hours come as San Antonio rides a steepening COVID-19 curve, with the seven-day average of new cases per day rising as of Wednesday to 764, the highest since mid-July. Bexar County saw 1,032 new cases on Wednesday, the latest with data available because of the Thanksgiving holiday. That brought the total number of cases to 76,750, with 1,343 deaths.
Community Labs announced Friday that it’s also scaling up its lab testing capacity, with plans to increase processing from 6,000 tests a day to 12,000 a day by Dec. 1.
Community Labs’ founders are Graham Weston, former Rackspace CEO and chairman; J. Bruce Bugg Jr., chairman of the Tobin Endowment, and J. Tullos Wells, managing director of the Kronkosky Charitable Foundation. The organization has offered mass testing in schools and workplaces, with the asymptomatic testing sites involve partnership with the City of San Antonio.
