Bay Area to add staff, hours for coronavirus testing in face of surge in demand
FacebookTwitterEmail
Francesca Deltrete administers a nose swab coronavirus test at a drive-thru testing site at the Alemany Farmers’ Market in San Francisco in 2020. The Bay Area is seeing new demand for testing.Jessica Christian/The Chronicle
With demand for coronavirus testing once again surging in the Bay Area, local health officials are gearing up to add staff and hours at testing sites and labs — reversing course on what had been a gradual wind-down of many testing operations.
The renewed demand for testing comes as new cases, mostly among unvaccinated residents, continue their steep climb in the region and nation. Statewide and in several Bay Area counties, daily testing plummeted between January and late June, but began ticking back up in early July. The rise started around the time new cases began increasing after the June 15 reopening of California’s economy, and the highly transmissible delta variant took hold as the dominant strain.