Coronavirus News: COVID-19 testing begins at New York churches

Wednesday, May 13, 2020

Testing opens at NYC churches to combat COVID

Candace McCowan interviews church leaders in Harlem who believe they can offer testing services to help save lives

NEW YORK (WABC) -- Abyssinian Baptist Church is one of 11 churches across the city, as well as Nassau County and Westchester that will begin testing on Wednesday.

Northwell Health is working with churches to target testing in low income and minority communities where there have been greater rates of infection and hospitalizations.

A second group of 13 churches will open for testing next week.

This includes COVID-19 and antibody testing as officials hope to contain the virus in these harder hit communities.

As several regions of the state will begin phase one of reopening Friday, the New York City metropolitan area has yet to reach some markers that the governor is requiring to reopen.

In New York City that includes not having the minimum amount of hospital beds and ICU beds available.

In the Mid-Hudson valley and Long Island, they are still struggling to meet the same two metrics before they can begin to reopen.

"Metric 2 is a 14 day decline in hospital deaths or fewer than 5 deaths in a three day average, we're not there yet," Nasaau County Executive Laura Curran said. "We can only have, to meet this metric, 2 cases of COVID per 100,000 residents. We're getting closer but as of the latest news i have we're not there yet"

For those interested in testing at churches, you must make an appointment. They will be doing diagnostic and antibody test on different days.