With widespread availability of home test kits for covid-19, the Justice administration announced today that it will scale back community testing.
West Virginia has provided free community testing for all citizens since the beginning of the pandemic.
The governor said the testing sites characterized by support from the National Guard will end, though.
“There are still plenty of places out there for you to get free testing. But, as far as putting the Guard out there right now, to be perfectly honest, what’s happening is they’re there maybe all day and maybe two people come by,” Gov. Jim Justice said during a briefing today.
“We’re just spending money that really and truly we don’t need to spend right now. That said, if things happen to get worse, we’ll be right back out there.”
The administration noted that testing sites will continue to be offered at pharmacies, participating local health departments, participating medical centers and federally qualified healthcare centers to people who have symptoms or have been exposed to covid-19. The federal government is also offering additional home testing kits.
“We just want to reassure everyone that we will still have testing available still, we’re just rolling back these specific events,” said State Health Officer Ayne Amjad. “We still have free testing available through different options.”
Amjad added that West Virginia’s online testing locations map is being updated to account for the changes.
“All the other locations will have antigen test kits that you can either take home, they can be mailed to you, you can pick them up — and these are just things that we want to make sure people have access to to test quickly, especially since a lot of people are testing at home,” Amjad said.
West Virginia registered 2,117 active cases of covid-19 today. The daily percent positivity was 8 percent.
That’s the largest number the state has identified since March 5, when the number was 2,192.