Pima County is getting a federally run drive-thru COVID-19 testing site that will provide up to 2,000 PCR tests a day as the county plans to sponsor another 1,000 daily PCR tests at a new testing center.

The FEMA testing site will open Monday, Jan. 24, at Pima Community College’s West Campus, 2202 W. Anklam Road., and will be open from 8 a.m. to 6 p.m. Monday through Saturday.

The Pima County Health Department submitted the request for the federal site two weeks ago as the omicron variant and the resulting surge in COVID-19 cases caused the availability of COVID-19 testing to decline.

More people in Pima County tested positive for COVID-19 in the second week of January than any other week on record, with cases rising nearly 190% countywide since the last week of December, according to data from the state health department. Labs will likely report more results from tests taken last week in the coming days.

Nearly 73,000 tests were performed in the county the week of Jan. 9 with 26% of them coming back positive, state data shows.

The county has made the availability of free testing a key pillar to its COVID-19 response and said it’s provided more than 2.5 million diagnostic tests since March 2020. The county-sponsored testing options have supplemented testing available through pharmacies and medical providers, but long lines and few appointment openings have recently made options scarce.

Now, the county hopes the federally sponsored testing site will lessen the strain on current testing options. According to Louie Valenzuela, the county health department’s division manager of emergency preparedness, appointments for the FEMA testing site will be made available through an online link in the coming days.

β€œAdding up to 2,000 tests a day should really increase our capacity twofold, hopefully, to see more people that need the ability to get tested,” Valenzuela said. β€œSo it should help with some of the static locations.”

To further increase testing options, the Pima County Board of Supervisors voted unanimously Tuesday to provide 1,000 PCR tests a day using the county’s American Rescue Plan Act, or ARPA, federal allocation.

The county will set up a new testing site to provide the PCR tests, according to Pima County Chief Medical Officer Dr. Francisco Garcia. He said the specifics have yet to be figured out but the site’s proposed location is the Kino Event Center on East Ajo Way.

In December, the board approved spending $3 million of the county’s ARPA COVID-19 relief dollars to double the county’s testing capacity. Those funds were expected to last for 15 weeks, but now, the county estimates that funding will run out by mid-February.

It’s unknown how much the new 1,000 daily PCR tests are expected to cost or how long the program will last, but the final contract will be brought before the board for final ratification at its next meeting on Feb. 1.

β€œFunding for this initiative is still be finalized and may involve the board’s reallocation of existing budgeted dollars,” Garcia said.

PCR tests, which require laboratory services that look for COVID-19 nucleic acid, can take up to 72 hours for results, although Garcia said the county’s contractor, Paradigm Laboratories, averages a 36-hour turnaround. Antigen, or rapid tests, can produce results within hours and look for small pieces of protein, or COVID-19 antigens, in your respiratory tract.

PCR tests are much more expensive to obtain than rapid tests, as they require laboratory service to produce a result. The county says it would pay $100 per PCR test through its contract with Paradigm.

β€œ(PCR testing) is still the gold standard in the testing world,” Valenzuela said. β€œIt’s a little bit more expensive to both perform and process, whereas the rapid antigen tests essentially just need 15 minutes of a health-care practitioner to proctor and monitor.”

Increasing the availability of PCR tests also increases the ability for labs to genetically sequence test samples to detect COVID-19 variants.

β€œWhether we still have delta circulating or if it’s going to be an increase in omicron, the PCR will give us the ability to understand that and then to kind of promote and prepare interventions accordingly,” Valenzuela said.

Throughout the next four weeks, the county also plans to distribute rapid antigen self-testing kits to β€œvulnerable and rural communities,” such as Arivaca, Sahuarita, Three Points and Lukeville, Garcia told the board in a memo.

The testing shortage isn’t unique to Pima County and has been felt at the national level. In response, the Biden administration announced last week Americans can begin ordering at-home COVID-19 rapid tests on Jan. 19, online at COVIDTests.gov, and tests will typically ship within 7-12 days of ordering.

The White House also announced private health insurance companies will be required to cover at-home COVID-19 tests for free starting Jan. 15.

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Contact reporter Nicole Ludden at nludden@tucson.com