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State to Provide COVID Tests for School and at Home Use


Governor Kathy Hochul announced a plan to fight the COVID-19 winter surge and make vaccines, boosters, testing and masks more widely available.

The plan includes steps to acquire 10 million more at-home test kits, two million tests for schools, supply state-run vaccination sites with tests, and the launch of seven new testing sites. She also announced that she is making $65 million available to counties across New York State to help with the costs associated with administering vaccines and boosters and enforcing the mask-or-vaccine mandate for indoor public places that went into effect statewide last week.

“So we are putting on the table $65 million to help them, associated with the costs for the protocols we put in place,” Hochul said in a news release. “And I will be ensuring that there’s at least a million dollars available for the small counties, which is not insignificant, and up to $2 million for the larger counties.” 

Hochul said the state broke another record with 23,391 positive COVID-19 cases earlier in the week.

“We had about 6,000 last Sunday to 23,000 this Monday. So, that is a very high spike in cases,” she said. 

She did say that, based on news from around the world, cases would spike due to the Omicron variant, but positive cases quickly decreased and the severity of illness from Omicron was not as bad when compared to the Delta variant. 

“But in terms of people’s own personal anxiety about it, just know that it’s very likely to be minor symptoms if you’re vaccinated and boosted,” she said. 

Additional Testing

Hochul said there are now 10 million more free at-home tests. The counties will start seeing those deliveries soon. And two million will go to school districts. 

“We believe that it’s critically important that our children not end up in that same situation they were for so many months, when they were so displaced from their normal environment, they did not get the quality of education, despite the best efforts of those incredible teachers and parents who struggled every single day alongside their children, just to deal with these circumstances we dealt with last time,” Hochul said. “We’re in a different environment, a different circumstance.”

She said the increased tests for schools would mean a child who has been exposed to someone that tested positive would be able to go home with a test in their backpack so they can quickly find out whether they are positive or if they can return to school. 

“So there’s no reason why our children can’t stay in school,” she said. 

Kathryn Garcia, the director of State Operations, discussed how the other tests will be allocated. 

“Another million tests will be going to the county emergency managers. In addition, we are going to send 1.6 million tests to New York City as well as 400,000 tests for our vaccine sites. So that if you are coming for a vaccine, you can take a test with you. I mean, this is good progress, but we still need more and we need more partnership from the federal government,” she said.

A warning was given to make sure the home test kits are either CDC or FDA approved.

There are over 1,800 testing sites in New York State, and those can be found by going to coronavirus.health.ny.gov. And the state will soon have an online testing portal where New Yorkers can order at-home PCR tests. They will be mailed overnight by mail and people can send the swab back in a prepaid envelope, with results expected within 48 hours. The launch date is still in the works.

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