City of New Haven
A map of the city’s five testing sites, identified by blue markers.
The city expects the new Day Street testing site to be able to conduct up to 100 coronavirus tests a day once it opens on Wednesday and becomes the city’s fifth testing site in total, and the third to be located in a dense, pedestrian-friendly locale.
Mayor Justin Elicker and city Health Director Maritza Bond gave that update Tuesday afternoon during the mayor’s daily coronavirus-related virtual press briefing, which was held online via the Zoom teleconferencing app and on YouTube Live.
The city now has a total of 1,508 confirmed positive coronavirus cases and 54 related fatalities.
Reiterating the announcement he made during his Monday presser, Elicker said that the new Day Street testing site will open Wednesday morning at 8 a.m. and will be located at 1319 Chapel St., on the basketball court in the park behind Amistad Middle School. The site will be run by the Greenwich-based doctor Steven Murphy.
Elicker and Bond said that the walk-up site will be free to use for any resident, and that people must schedule an appointment ahead of time before showing up for a test. Anyone interested in receiving a test at the Day Street site can register here , or they can call 203 – 946-4949 for help setting up an appointment.
The testing site will be the fifth to be located in New Haven. The first two to open are both on Long Wharf, one run by Yale New Haven Hospital and one by CVS in conjunction with the state.
The second two are located in dense, walkable neighborhoods with majority African American and/or Hispanic populations, and which have become hotspots in the city for infections, hospitalizations, and deaths. Those are run, respectively, by Cornell Scott Hill Health Center at 230 Dixwell Ave. and by Fair Haven Community Health Care at 374 Grand Ave.
“The initial intended site was the Stop and Shop plaza” on Whalley Avenue, Elicker said about the fifth city testing site. “What was holding it up for so long was that we were in negotiations with the Greater Dwight Development Corporation, which owns the property. We were unable to come to an agreement, and so we needed to find an alternative site.” And so the city landed on the Day Street Park site.
When asked how many tests per day the Day Street site should be able to conduct, Bond (pictured) said the average daily capacity should be roughly 100.
That’s on top of the roughly 300 tests a day YNHH is able to conduct at its Sargent Drive site, the roughly 1,000 tests a day the CVS site plans to conduct when at full capacity, the roughly 20 to 30 tests a day Cornell Scott Hill Health Center expects to be able to conduct at its Dixwell site, and the roughly 40 to 50 tests a day the Fair Haven Community Health Care site expects to be able to conduct at its Grand Avenue site.
Click here for a map of New Haven’s five coronavirus testing sites.
Local, state, and national public health experts have continually stressed the importance of a dramatic increase in daily testing as one of the most important factors in determining when the country can “open up” its economy and social life again, since testing identifies where the virus is in a community, who needs medical treatment, and who needs to quarantine or isolate in order to stem community spread of the disease.
Other updates included:
• City Community Services Administrator Mehul Dalal (pictured) provided more details on the city’s planned pop-up triage center in Blake Field for homeless individuals who continue to sleep outside and have not already taken the city up on housing relocation services. Dalal said that the site should open sometime next week, and that it is a partnership between the city, the Cornell Scott Hill Health Center, the Connecticut Mental Health Center, Columbus House, and United Way, among other local healthcare and homeless services nonprofits.
“This is for those who cannot or will not accept the sheltering opportunities that are welcome to them,” he said. “They’re sleeping in the streets or in encampments.”
Dalal said the pop-up site will be set up on the concrete pad on the northern end of Blake Field, and will be open from 12:30 to 4 p.m., Monday through Friday, starting next week. The site will offer food, mental and physical health care, “wraparound” services, and connections to temporary and permanent housing services. He said the site might also offer coronavirus testing for homeless individuals, though that testing piece has not yet been finalized.
And he said homeless individuals will have access to showers at East Rock Magnet School twice a week.
Dalal and Elicker added that the city has decompressed 185 homeless individuals from local shelters to one New Haven hotel, one West Haven hotel, and that it is talking with a third hotel about providing housing for the homeless if the need arises. Elicker said that one New Haven hotel that formerly provided rooms is no longer hosting any homeless individuals.
• The mayor was asked if the city is considering contracting with rideshare services to provide free transportation to testing sites, as Hartford has done, or setting up sites around the city for the free distribution of masks, as Stamford has done. Elicker (pictured) pointed to a state agreement with the M7 taxi cab service that provides free rides for people who have scheduled an appointment at the CVS testing site but do not have their own cars. Elicker said the city pushed for the state to include that provision in its agreement with CVS.
As for free mask distribution, Bond said the city has provided a variety of different personal protective equipment (PPE) like masks and gowns to local community health centers when they have spoken up about needing help. Elicker said he is wary of having the city hand out free masks that are of short-term use since they degrade so quickly. The city is instead encouraging residents to use cloth face-coverings that can be cleaned and reused. He reiterated that residents should not use medical grade masks, which should be reserved for health care providers and other front line workers.
Prospect Hill/Newhallville/Dixwell Alder Steve Winter said in a Tuesday afternoon email that people can pick up up to two free masks per person at the Dixwell Plaza Cornell Scott Hill Health Center thanks to donations by Mid‑K Hair Supplies, in partnership with the Health Center and Dixwell Alder Jeanette Morrison.
• Elicker was also asked if the city is still considering setting up its own relief fund to provide direct cash assistance for undocumented New Haven residents who have been left out of just about every state and federal coronavirus-related relief offering so far. Elicker said that the city has been in communication with Junta for Progressive Action and local immigrant rights advocate Kica Matos, and that the city plans to promote a fund that Junta has created to help undocumented residents pay rent. He said the city is also going to be partnering with local advocates to play Spanish-language recordings in city neighborhoods that describe the importance of washing one’s hands with soap and water and social distancing.
He said he hopes the state offers additional support for undocumented immigrants in particular, and that the city likely won’t set up its own direct cash assistance program because of city budget deficits exacerbated by the coronavirus.