Cape and Islands State Senator and task force member Julian Cyr.
HYANNIS – The Cape Cod Reopening Task Force has announced the opening of two COVID-19 testing sites in Barnstable County amid rising virus case numbers across the state.
One testing location will be at the Cape Cod Melody Tent in Hyannis while the other will be at the Barnstable County Fairgrounds in Falmouth.
The sites, financed by both state and local funds, will provide much needed PCR testing capacity to asymptomatic and symptomatic Cape residents in a region which has been described as a testing desert by task force officials.
Officials said that the testing could also not come at a better time as the Town of Barnstable was put into the Department of Public Health’s highest risk category for the spread of the virus.
Task force member and Cape and Islands State Senator Julian Cyr (D-Truro) said that the new testing site in Falmouth will go a long way towards mitigating the spread of COVID-19 in the community, though it is not the barrier-free testing he wanted.
Tests will only be provided by appointment and though testing will not all be free, no one will be turned away if they cannot afford it, said Cyr.
He said that while officials are looking into insurance reimbursement to make the sites sustainable, keeping the site running as long as possible will be a challenge.
“We are operating under the assumption that we have to be judicious with these resources, so even though we have about a million dollars in revenue, we have to make this money last over the next six months,” said Cyr.
State Representative Dylan Fernandes lamented that the state’s Stop the Spread program testing sites have not been set up on Cape Cod despite the region’s high elderly population—a demographic at risk of severe illness from the coronavirus.
However, Fernandes was still pleased by the two new testing sites that were partially funded with $300,000 the representative secured over the summer as part of a supplemental budget aimed to assist communities hit hard by the ongoing pandemic.
“This comes at a really important time. The spread of COVID is the worst we’ve seen it here and cases are continuing to rise,” said Fernandes.
“We need more testing. That’s clearly been a gap here in the region. The more able we are to have this testing and track the spread of the virus and isolate people who are positive the more we’re going to be able to slow down the spread of this disease.”
Director of the Barnstable Department of Health and Environment and task force member, Sean O’Brien, said that the task force expects the testing sites to be fully ready by early next week.
O’Brien said that the Falmouth site will likely operate 2 to 3 days a week, while the Melody Tent site will likely operate 7 days a week.
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