LIC Gantries (Wiki commons via Airbornelayer CC BY-SA 3.0)
May 7, 2020 By Allie Griffin
The public will be able to head to Long Island City to be tested for coronavirus antibodies free of charge next week, Mayor Bill de Blasio announced today.
The neighborhood will be home to one of the five initial testing sites across the five boroughs scheduled to launch next week. The Long Island City facility will be located at 34-09 Queens Blvd.
The city aims to test 140,000 New Yorkers for antibodies through the initiative in partnership with BioReference Laboratories.
The first five testing centers will each test roughly 1,000 people per day to reach 70,000 people over the first two weeks of the program.
The next 70,000 tests will be done at the beginning of June, with more sites added, de Blasio said.
The city will launch a hotline for New Yorkers to schedule appointments for the free testing tomorrow. Priority will go to residents who live in the neighborhoods where the testing sites are, de Blasio said.
“The goal is to focus on the people in the general area of these test sites,” de Blasio.
Antibody testing can show if a person has previously contracted the coronavirus, but health experts have warned that it doesn’t mean someone cannot be infected again.
The NYC Department of Health will study the results of the antibody testing to understand how the virus has impacted different demographics.
De Blasio said antibody testing provides information to the individual receiving the test, but also helps inform healthcare leaders.
“We’re really killing two birds with one stone,” he said. “The individual gets something they need, but the healthcare leadership, the scientists, they get the information they need to do the research better to answer the questions about the disease.”
People will be asked demographic and employment information when they are tested. They will receive their test results in 24 to 48 hours.
The 140,000 antibody tests for everyday New Yorkers are additional to the 140,000 antibody tests for New York City’s first responders and healthcare workers that the mayor announced last week.
Together that’s more than a quarter million antibody tests, de Blasio said.
“These are numbers that really start to add up even against the size of a city as big as ours.”
10 Comments
Just made an appointment. Earliest available is may 20. https://www.bioreference-appointments.com/nyc
went to your link – no success. Location in Queens – 43-11 34th St – doesn’t show any available appointments thru August )
Does anyone know the phone number to call for an appointment to get the antibody test ?
888-279-0967
Interesting. It’s now Friday with no hotline number to show. Wouldn’t antibody testing be given in the hardest hit areas first. I’m a resident in LIC and I preference is given to LIC residents not Corona or JH where there are more cova cases. As usual things will be run like everything else since this epidemic started rushed with not any serious planning.
I still have not seen the hotline number posted for antibody testing appointments. Where can I find the number?
Where address please
Do I have to make an appointment? At what time an what’s the address?
“The city will launch a hotline for New Yorkers to schedule appointments for the free testing tomorrow.”
Anyone know the hotline number yet?