COLLEGE PARK, Md. — People waited in long lines as thousands flock to a COVID testing site in College Park, where Express Healthcare has been inundated this week.
“Optimistically speaking, it’s about two hours’ (wait), I’m afraid today is going to be longer,” Express Healthcare manager Ward Rodgers said. “Today we’re getting hit harder than more recently. It’s really exploded this last week.”
Rodgers said two weeks ago his clinic was handling only 100-200 tests a day. Now they’re doing 1,000 a day.
“They’re requiring testing,” Rodgers said. “That’s a lot of testing that’s going to be required and unfortunately, we are setting records but not in a good way.”
Police are helping organize the crowds of people as schools and businesses see more positive cases and require tests.
Rogers warns that the wait times are longer than ever for results, between 48-72 hours.
"We have travelers coming up needing to get the PCR results, and we cannot guarantee them in that turnaround time, which we've been as good as anybody for turnaround time, but we are being overwhelmed," Rodgers said.
They’re also helping University of Maryland students who need the tests to fly home.
“It’s a big line, we have to wait here, it’s freezing, and I want to see my family on Christmas,” University of Maryland senior Anushri Pripathi said.
Pripathi needs a negative COVID test to fly to India on December 21st. She said she's worried it could be positive, after she sat for her exams last week in-person.
“I was so scared to take the exam in person, because most of the people are getting positive,” said Pripathi. “So I was scared to go in and take the exams, but we have to take it.”