HAYWARD — -As the number of coronavirus cases in the Bay Area climbed above 800 Monday morning, hundreds of people lined up near Fire Station No. 7 in Hayward, hoping to get tested for COVID-19.
The city of Hayward in partnership with Avellino Lab USA, Inc., a private biotechnology firm based in Menlo Park, have established a testing site across from the station at 28270 Huntwood Ave., at Tennyson Park.
Whether waiting in cars in a long drive-up testing line along Huntwood Ave., or standing in line along a sidewalk and winding through the tree-lined park, people were anxious to get a test.
“I have been sick for the last five days,” Mayra Salvador, 55, of Bay Point said, while wearing a surgical mask and waiting in line.
“I’ve had a cough, fever, headache, stomach ache, and a little trouble breathing,” she said.
Officials say they can test up to 370 people each day, and the site is expected to be open every day for at least three weeks, welcome news for Bay Area residents who have tried to get tested through their healthcare provider or county health department, only to be turned away for lack of tests.
However, officials doing the tests at the Hayward site were requiring that each person to be tested have a fever of at least 100.4 degrees Fahrenheit.
Salvador, who is a nanny, was concerned, saying she had run a fever for several days prior to Monday, but wasn’t sure if she’d meet the threshold Monday morning at the Hayward site, despite her other symptoms.
“I’m concerned that I have spread it already,” she said, though she has not been working since she started feeling ill.
“I’m OK to wait in line because I’m hoping to get a test and get this situation resolved,” Salvador said.
Capt. Don Nichelson with the Hayward Fire Department said in the first few hours of running the test site, about 1 out of every 10 people in line met the threshold for a test after being screened for a fever and other symptoms, and about 1 out of every 5 people in cars were getting tests.
People hoping to get tested had been lining up near the site since roughly 6 a.m., Nichelson said.
“We wanted to provide this service for people who are actually sick. We only have a limited number of test kits available, so we had to make that our top priority,” he said.
Anyone who meets the criteria for testing can be tested for free, regardless of citizenship status or other factors, Nichelson said.
On Monday, there were no interpreters for people who speak languages other than English, but the screening paperwork is printed in both English and Spanish, Nichelson said.
First responders and health care workers were also being screened at the fire station if they met the testing criteria as well, and by around 10 a.m. Monday, about four had been tested out of six who arrived asking for a test, Nichelson said.
Some people waiting in line during the chilly, gray morning were frustrated after being turned away because they were not informed they would need a fever to be tested. One elderly man, Pundit Prasad, of Hayward, said he walked to the line with his wife, because both of them had been exposed to someone with some symptoms of COVID-19, but the pair was told to simply go home and isolate.
One woman told a fire department employee she drove from San Francisco to get tested. After waiting in line for nearly an hour and being told she and others wouldn’t qualify for a test without a fever, she said the information about testing requirements should have been made more clear ahead of time, or at least at the beginning of the line.
