ANCHORAGE, Alaska – The free drive-through COVID-19 testing site at 4115 Lake Otis Parkway scheduled to demobilize at 6 p.m. June 12, 2020.
The testing site, near the intersection of Lake Otis and East 42nd Avenue, opened in mid-March to prepare for a surge in suspected cases and if greater testing capacity was needed. At that time, no community-based testing was available in Anchorage.
Now testing is more easily accessible and increasing within the community. Additionally, with more surgeries and procedures now available, hospital staff supporting the testing site are returning to care for patients in their respective facilities.
“Thank you to our Providence caregivers as well as our partners at Alaska Native Medical Center, Alaska Regional Hospital, Anchorage Neighborhood Health Center and Southcentral Foundation, which provided a variety of staffing and testing support. During the past 10 weeks, we provided more than 6,500 COVID-19 tests to the Anchorage community,” said Michael Bernstein, M.D., chief medical officer and incident commander for Providence Health & Services Alaska. “Their dedication to the health of our community helped identify positive cases and was critically important to limiting the spread of COVID-19 in Alaska.”
As testing moves to other locations, people still must have a referral before being tested. Referrals can be obtained during a live, phone or a virtual appointment with a clinician. Testing involves collecting a swab from the nose, which is then sent to a lab for testing. People are contacted with results as soon as they are available. For more information on alternate testing sites, the Alaska Department of Health & Social Services maintains a testing sites locator on its COVID-19 site.
The drive-through site may continue in the future as a testing location, potentially using alternative sources of staffing. We are actively exploring options with government partners to allow for future operations at the Lake Otis site.
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Providence Health & Services Alaska is part of Providence St. Joseph Health, a not-for-profit network of hospitals, care centers, health plans, physicians, clinics, home health services, affiliated services and educational facilities. For more information about Providence, visit: www.providence.org/alaska.
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