New drive-thru COVID-19 testing site in Pierce County opening at park in Spanaway
A new drive-thru site to get tested for COVID-19 in Pierce County will open Tuesday at Spanaway Park and run for two weeks, Pierce County Emergency Management announced.
The site at 14905 Breseman Blvd. S. will be open Tuesday to Saturday, 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. It will be open through Jan. 21. Tests are free and appointments are not required. The site does not offer rapid tests. Results will be available to people three to five days from when they are tested.
Pierce County Emergency Management spokesperson Mike Halliday asked people looking to get tests not to arrive too early. He said anyone who shows up before 8:30 a.m. will be asked to come back.
“We’re going to do this site for two weeks, see what the response is like and then evaluate what to do after the two weeks,” Halliday said.
The Tacoma-Pierce County Health Department and Pierce County are operating a number of sites where people can get tested for the coronavirus.
Pierce County previously operated a drive-thru testing site at the Washington State Fair Gold Lot in Puyallup. Halliday said that site closed at the end of Friday because the county was only able to reserve it for two weeks.
Halliday said the new lot should be able to handle “quite a bit” of traffic. Demand for tests has remained high amid the pandemic’s latest omicron surge. On Friday, the Washington state Department of Health reported 17,091 new COVID-19 cases.
Last week, Pierce County’s Gold Lot temporary testing site administered 6,517 tests between Monday and Thursday. Halliday said the longest wait time he saw at the Gold Lot site was about two hours, but that there were some times during the afternoon when there was no wait at all.
This story was originally published January 10, 2022 at 10:45 AM.
