DENVER — The Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment will close about half of its existing COVID-19 test sites Thursday, citing declining demand as at-home testing becomes more widely available.
At their peak, CDPHE locations processed 15,000 to 20,000 tests daily, Scott Bookman, Colorado's COVID-19 incident commander, said. Today the locations process about 2,000 tests per day, he said.
"A decrease in demand for testing at our community sites, that’s a good thing," Bookman said. "That means people are able to access testing in different ways that are easier and more efficient for them."
He said more people were getting tests at doctors' offices, pharmacies and through the mail -- a far cry from the early days of the pandemic when lines for drive-through testing sometimes stretched blocks.
"We all remember what the early days of testing were like across the country, and we have reached a point now where there is wide availability of testing," Bookman said. "We are using single-digit percentages of that ultimate capacity that we had, and so it really is time to scale this back to meet the demands of the moment."
Scaling back means shutting down many free community test locations across the state. Bookman said the department decided which sites to close based on the volume of patients and access to tests in the community.
"These were not the easiest decisions to make," he said, but "every Coloradan can have access to testing immediately on demand by using these rapid tests at home."
He said people who test positive — even on at-home tests — should call their doctors to see if they could benefit from COVID-19 treatment options including antivirals and antibody treatments.
SUGGESTED VIDEOS: COVID-19 Coronavirus