Columbia’s busiest COVID-19 testing site is relocating, extending hours. What to know
One of Columbia’s busiest COVID-19 testing sites will relocate from the state Department of Health and Environmental Control parking lot on Bull Street to the Columbia Place Mall starting Thursday.
State health officials chose to move the site and extend its hours in an effort to reduce testing wait times and prevent further traffic backups on Bull Street. While 2600 Bull Street will no longer serve as a testing site, it will still offer Pfizer, Moderna and Johnson & Johnson vaccinations.
The new site, operated by TourHealth, will offer eight lanes of testing capacity daily from 7:30 a.m. to 7 p.m., and should easily meet peak demand, DHEC said in a statement. At-home saliva test kits with paid shipping to the laboratory included and vaccination services also will be offered at the Columbia Place Mall site.
Preregistration is recommended, but not required.
“The new Columbia Place Mall location was specifically designed to accommodate the increased need for testing in the Midlands area created by the surging delta and omicron variants and the space limitations of the 2600 site,” state health officials said in a statement. “Those who desire to be tested are encouraged to make the short drive for significantly reduced wait times and a much-improved experience.”
The move comes amid a record surge in cases following the emergence of the extremely transmissible omicron variant that has created an unprecedented demand for COVID-19 tests.
The tens of thousands of South Carolina residents seeking testing each day in recent weeks has placed an immense strain on some of the state’s 320 testing sites and led to hours-long waits at some locations.
The massive influx of testing has also overburdened the labs that process test samples, including DHEC’s public health lab, leading to delayed turnaround times. While most tests are still being processed within 48 to 72 hours, some residents are waiting a week or more for results, state health officials said.
In those situations, the agency advises people who are symptomatic to get retested.
State health officials are in the process of bringing on more COVID-19 testing vendors to meet the soaring demand and have ordered nearly 500,000 rapid antigen tests for distribution.
As of Tuesday, about 100,000 of the rapid at-home test kits had arrived in South Carolina and DHEC’s logistics team was busy processing the tests and preparing to distribute them throughout the state, spokesman Derrek Asberry said.
DHEC also recently reached an agreement to buy 1 million point-of-care tests — which unlike at-home tests must be administered by a healthcare professional — but the arrival of those tests has been delayed due to severe weather elsewhere in the country, he said.
Details of how those tests will be distributed once they arrive in South Carolina are still being finalized, officials said.
At some point this month, South Carolina also expects to receive federal COVID-19 testing assistance.
The White House last month said it planned to open additional federal testing sites across the country and ship 500 million rapid COVID-19 tests to Americans free of charge starting in January. As of Tuesday, however, Asberry said DHEC did not know the status of the rapid tests promised by the federal government.
This story was originally published January 11, 2022 at 2:32 PM.