Coronavirus Testing Site Opening For First Responders

WATSONVILLE, CA — The specimen collection site that's expected to open soon in Watsonville aims to eventually collect 132 samples per day for health care workers, first responders and essential business workers. Officials say vulnerable residents, such as farmworkers and homeless people, will also be able to get a test at the site.

Testing will be by appointment only and available regardless of immigration status or health insurance coverage, the county announced Thursday in a news release. Spanish language materials will be available.

Officials have previously said the site will open at Ramsay Park.

Mimi Hall, director of the Santa Cruz County Health Services Agency, said last week that officials are describing the Watsonville site as a specimen collection site — not a testing site — because patients need a referral to have a sample collected there.

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Santa Cruz County is opening the site in collaboration with the state, which will staff the site with workers from government contractor OptumServe Health Services. California will also provide workers protective gear.

"It helps us immensely to have OptumServe come in and do that for us," Hall said.

The Watsonville site is one of 80 the state is looking to open, the city said. Watsonville was chosen because of its proximity to Monterey County.

The site will be run by SAVE Lives Santa Cruz County, an effort to effort to increase testing capacity, quarantine and isolation services, and contact tracing to help public health officials determine with whom COVID-19 patients may have interacted. These steps are essential to restarting public life in Santa Cruz County without a widely available vaccine, the county said.

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