SAN ANTONIO — Bexar County will be one of six in Texas to host a new, federally operated COVID-19 drive-thru testing site when it kicks into gear on Tuesday.
Officials with the Texas Division of Emergency Management will be on hand to assist at the testing site, which will be located in Parking Lot C outside the Alamodome. The new site was announced Friday, and comes after Gov. Greg Abbott requested federal aid as the highly contagious omicron variant exacerbates the state's most drastic surge of the ongoing pandemic.
An appointment is required before heading to the site. You can register here, or by calling 1-800-635-8611.
PCR tests will be used at the site, which opens at 10 a.m. and will operate through 5 p.m. Afterward, it'll open every day at 7 a.m. through Feb. 4, while shutting down at 5. Test results should be provided within 48 hours.
There are a few days when there will be other events at the Alamodome, thus the testing site. Those days are Jan. 22 and Jan. 28-30.
Officials say they will be able to test 1,200 visitors a day at the Alamodome, "with the option to expand as needed."
"This added support allows the City of San Antonio to address the increased demand for testing due to the rapidly spreading omicron variant," Metro Health Director Claude Jacob is quoted as saying in the release.
The news comes at the end of a week that saw several additional mass, no-cost testing sites open up around San Antonio. Nearly 400,000 Bexar County residents have been diagnosed with COVID-19 since the pandemic began, with 2022's first weeks yielding some of the highest daily new-case counts of the pandemic.