Cities around Central Texas have been adding additional testing sites to keep up with the demand.
The Waco-McLennan County Public Health District has a free testing site at McLennan Community College and Columbus Avenue Baptist Church.
“We were just looking at demand and we wanted to make sure we have enough options available,” Stephanie Alvey from the Public Health District said.
The church is open for free PCR testing Monday through Saturday from 8 a.m. – 4:30 p.m.
The other site at MCC is at Sommunity Services parking lot M. It is open Monday through Friday 9 a.m. – 4:30 p.m.
“Being able to offer that resource to people and making sure it’s readily available is very important,” Alvey said.
The City of Killeen has two sites open for the week as well.
“Our goal is to make sure the hospital stays available for the patients who need medical treatment not just diagnosis,” Killeen fire chief James Kubinski said.
Kubinski says they have seen the testing demand go from 10-20 tests per day, to a couple hundred per day over night.
Now – that number is up to about 500-600 per day at each of those sites.
Killeen is providing free rapid covid testing through January 14 at the former Nolan Middle School.
Also, the Killeen Special Events Center is open through January 13. Both are open from 10 a.m. to 7 p.m.
“We’re gonna watch our demand and see what the new case rate is doing and scale our services based on that on a week to week basis,” Kubinski said.
In Temple, there is a site for rapid testing at Wilson Park in the south parking lot from 10 a.m. – 6 p.m. Testing will run from Tuesday – Saturday until January 29.