Coronavirus Test Sites Leave Carless New Yorkers Behind: Letter

BROOKLYN, NEW YORK — New, mostly drive-through coronavirus testing facilities across New York City leave behind vast swaths of city dwellers without cars, argued a letter to Mayor Bill de Blasio.

Brooklyn's Community Board 6 members sent the letter Wednesday calling for the city to set up testing that isn't car-dependent.

City dwellers with lower incomes are less likely to own cars and more likely to be impacted by the new coronavirus, the letter states.

"Regardless of income, unlike those who live in suburban and rural communities, fewer than half of Community Board 6 residents own cars," the letter states. "We need a policy that allows people without access to cars to be tested at the same rate as car owners."

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Community Board 6 covers Park Slope, Gowanus, Red Hook and other west Brooklyn neighborhoods. Confirmed coronavirus cases are relatively low in those zip codes compared to other Brooklyn neighborhoods, city data shows, although officials have pointed out low-income and people of color often don't have access to tests.

The letter points out normality will only return once widespread testing is available and accessible to "all residents of the city."

Only about 45 percent of New York City households own a car, according to NYCEDC.

City and state officials have set up drive-through testing facilities in mostly-minority sections of Queens and Brooklyn, as one in a Sears parking lot off Beverley Road in Flatbush.

De Blasio, when asked Thursday about the CB6 letter, didn't directly address the needs of carless city dwellers. He said testing has been limited in large part because of federal foot dragging and he understands "100 percent" why communities want easier access to testing.

The next steps need to be more "strategic," he said.

"We got to figure out how to get a lot more testing, apply it where it's needed most, and then build toward the day where we use it as a strategic tool to actually contain this disease, to focus it on people who have – are symptomatic, to focus it on people who we need to determine should not go to work, people who can go to work again, to focus it on who needs to be quarantined and to make those quarantine spaces available in large number," he said.

The CB6 letter urged the city to move as quickly as possible to set up ways to test without relying on cars.

"Of course, this is new territory for all of us, and we don't know precisely what form this would take, but it may involve tests coming directly to people," it states.

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