New Castle County is ending its COVID testing sites.
The county began its COVID testing operation in June of last year in partnership with the state and Curative. It has since administered nearly 500,000 tests at about 500 different sites with the entire effort being funded by federal stimulus dollars.
Now County Executive Matt Meyer says there’s no need for the county to continue in this role as spread of the virus is down and tests are widely available.
“The supply is sufficient and your county government no longer needs to be providing these sites,” said Meyer. “We’ve been scaling them down over the past few months. Demand has been decreasing.”
The county was administering as many as 16,000 tests per week at the start of the year. That amount was down to just over 3,000 during the first week of May.
Meyer touts the county’s effort as being among the first in the nation to start testing.
“We managed to, in partnership with the Delaware Division of Public Health and Delaware Emergency Management Agency, to get these fast, free, efficient test sites set up,” he said. “We got them set up because there was almost no supply. There was almost nowhere else to get a COVID-19 test.”
Demand for tests is down statewide as well with an average of just over 3,500 tests administered per day in Delaware. The state was often doing more than three times that amount over the winter when cases surged.
Meyer says New Castle County will continue its wastewater testing program and is ready to relaunch COVID testing of individuals in the future if needed.
The final day of testing in New Castle County is Sunday, May 23.
