New York City quietly closed half its COVID testing sites as omicron rebounded this spring

Despite the resurgence of COVID-19 this spring, there are now fewer options for free PCR tests in New York City.

A Gothamist analysis of municipal data found that the number of NYC Health + Hospitals testing sites were cut in half citywide from mid-February to mid-April — from 270 sites to 144 locations — leading to fewer hours of testing availability. This shrunken landscape includes both brick-and-mortar clinics as well as mobile testing vans.

Practically speaking, these trends meant that New Yorkers had 15% fewer hours to get a free PCR test — given more than 10,000 hours were available the week of February 14th, when the omicron surge was waning, versus 8,500 hours the week of April 18th. By this part of the spring, the coronavirus was rebounding again, driven by newer versions of the omicron variant.

The revelation defies a pledge made by city health officials in the early spring, when they said changes in federal pandemic funding would not reduce city-run testing sites.

“There's going to be no change to our city-run sites in terms of our mobile sites, our fixed sites,” Dr. Ted Long, the executive director of the NYC Test and Trace Corps, told Gothamist in late March. “We're going to be continuing full force ahead and even expanding as we need to, to meet the demands of testing across New York City.”

WNYC host Michael Hill spoke with Betsy Ladyzhets, a health data journalist who broke the story for Gothamist. Click listen in the player to hear their conversation.