Looking for a free, same-day COVID-19 test in Tampa Bay this week? Get in line.
At Hillsborough County’s sole government-run testing site, the queue has often circled the building in the days after Christmas, with some people reporting waiting more than an hour to get through. That site at the West Tampa Community Resource Center tested 2,394 people on Dec. 26. That is up from 1,059 tests on Dec. 20, and is more than five times what was about 400 tests daily in November.
In Pinellas County, the testing site at the Center for Health Equity in St. Petersburg had a wait of around 90 minutes on Monday afternoon, as a dozen masked people waited outside and about 100 more stood inside. One man brought his own folding chair. Results from rapid tests there arrived within an hour, as promised. More accurate PCR test results came within two days.
