By Melanie Petrucci, Senior Community Reporter
Photo/courtesy Moira Miller
Shrewsbury – As a tent was erected in the parking lot of the CVS pharmacy on the corner of Route 9 and South Street on March 16, speculation as to whether it is going to be a testing site for the novel coronavirus immediately surfaced.
Town Manager Kevin Mizikar shared by phone that it is possibly going to be a testing site.
“We’ve been made aware that that location is likely going to be a testing spot,” he said. “I don’t know when it is going to open and I don’t know what the process to go to it will be.”
It most likely will not be a site that one just shows up and waits in line; rather it would be by appointment.
He said, “We are in conversations with them both from a permitting standpoint of the structure itself and a logistic standpoint from traffic flow should this actually become a testing site.”
“This is if and when and we haven’t got a definitive yes and when it will be opening…we haven’t received 100 percent confirmation that it will open,” Mizikar cautioned.
State Rep. Hannah Kane reiterated that caution was needed.
In a Facebook post she noted, “The White House reached out to CVS to help in the federal effort to expand testing centers and CVS chose locations based on the size of parking lots and ease of egress, NOT for any reason specific to current or suspected size of coronavirus infected population.”
“When the site is open to broader testing it will ONLY be for people who have been ordered a test by a medical professional and the goal is for it to be by appointment so as to manage the traffic, which will be queued at the UMass parking lot on South Street. CVS is working with our police department and UMass public safety to ensure that traffic flows appropriately to the site.”
