Free rapid antigen testing will be offered for three days this month in Park City. It’s a combined effort with the Utah Dept. of Health of Test Utah.
A mobile test site will be set up on Tuesday after the Presidents Day holiday from noon to 7 pm at Park City High School. Park City School District Chief Operations Officer Mike Tanner says this test site has been used before and has received good participation which makes it a good location for testing, given the area’s high transmission rate of COVID-19.
“And so, the combination of the willing public and the identified problem, which is receding, luckily,” Tanner said, “it’s just made this an ideal site for us to, to have the testing going on.”
The mobile test stie will be set up again after the school district’s winter break on the following Monday and Tuesday, Feb. 22nd and 23rd – again from noon to 7 p.m. in the high school parking lot.
Those who want to be tested are asked to register in advance online. For those who just show up, it will take you longer to get through the process.
Tanner notes that this rapid antigen testing is not as accurate as a regular test, but it is a good, first level screening.”
“This just for people who are concerned that they may have been exposed or they're going to visit a loved one and don't want to contaminate that person,” Tanner said. “ And it's just a nice resource that we have available for us.”
Tanner reports that the school district is maintaining rigorous COVID testing at both the high school and Treasure Mountain Junior High after both schools were shut down in January due to high numbers of COVID cases – beyond what the state threshold of 15 cases per school allows.
Tanner says since the students returned to school January 25th, half of them at both schools are tested Monday through Thursday and half of the teachers are tested on Friday and then the other half are tested the following week.
“The program has been really successful," he said. "It’s a two week testing cycle that we plan on keeping in place at least until after winter break for one more testing cycle. And we'll watch the county numbers at that point and see if we can terminate the program.”
Tanner believes the ongoing testing not only helps weed out any positive cases, but provides the staff, parents, and students with confidence that the numbers being reported on the district’s dashboard are accurate.
