Prairie State Wire

Illinois Department of Public Health issued the following announcement on March 16.

In an effort to make one of the largest COVID-19 testing infrastructures in the country more easily accessible for residents, the Illinois Department of Public Health (IDPH) is fine tuning its targeted mobile testing operations.  This is in response to a decline in the number of people utilizing state supported testing sites and in preparation for the next phases of the pandemic response.  IDPH is realigning its testing strategy to deploy mobile testing teams to locations with a high demand for testing, such as schools, processing plants, high risk workplaces, and other targeted locations. 

"By focusing on taking testing to where people are, we hope to increase the number of people being tested for COVID-19," said IDPH Director Dr. Ngozi Ezike.  "Testing is important to quickly identify individuals with COVID-19 to stop further spread of the virus.  Our test positivity rate is currently low, and one way to keep it low is to identify infected individuals as quickly as possible so contact tracing efforts can identify close contacts who may have been exposed and have them quarantine so the virus does not spread further."     

Due to changes in public demand, the days of operation for the State community-based testing sites are being adjusted.  These changes will go into effect on Thursday, March 18, 2021.  The new days of operation for the community-based testing sites are as follows:

Testing Site	Address	Days	Hours
Arlington Heights	Arlington Racetrack 2000 W. Euclid Ave.	Mon-Wed-Fri-Sat	8am - 4pm
Auburn Gresham	7938 S. Halsted St.	Mon-Wed-Fri-Sat	8am - 4pm
Aurora	2450 N. Farnsworth Ave.	Mon-Wed-Fri-Sat	8am - 4pm
Bloomington	1106 Interstate Dr.	Mon-Wed-Fri-Sat	9am - 5pm
Champaign	Market Place Shopping 2000 N. Neil St.	Mon-Wed-Fri-Sat	8am - 4pm
East St. Louis	St. Clair Square 134 St. Clair Square	Mon-Wed-Fri-Sat	8am - 4pm
Harwood Heights	6959 W. Forest Preserve Rd.	Mon-Wed-Fri-Sat	7am - 3pm
Peoria	Peoria Civic Center Fulton Street Parking Lot	Mon-Wed-Fri-Sat	8am - 4pm
Rockford	1321 Sandy Hollow Rd.	Mon-Wed-Fri-Sat	8am - 4pm
Waukegan	102 W. Water St.	Mon-Wed-Fri-Sat	8am - 4pm

For more information about state-supported community testing sites, as well as other COVID-19 testing sites, visit http://www.dph.illinois.gov/testing

Original source can be found here.