Turn Buildings and Parking Lots Into Covid-19 Testing Sites

In any other March, the University of Dayton’s basketball arena would have hosted thousands of eager fans cheering on the Flyers – but this year it stands empty, its parking lot converted into a drive-through coronavirus testing site. After a faculty member at the university took to Twitter to express his frustration over a lack of testing sites in the community, President Eric Spina of the university contacted a local health network about turning his campus into a front line of defense in the pandemic.

“We are anchor institutions within our communities,” Spina says. “I think we are called to find ways to contribute to the well-being of our local communities, but more broadly in the United States, and even more broadly, society.”

The site at the University of Dayton Arena has been operational since mid-March, and tested 219 people on its first day, according to the Dayton Daily News. Other institutions have also offered up their campuses as testing sites: A parking lot at Trinity Washington University, in the District of Columbia, has been converted into a drive-through/walkup testing site for pediatric patients, in partnership with Children’s National Hospital, and City University of New York’s Herbert H. Lehman College, in the Bronx, recently opened an appointment-only testing site geared toward vulnerable New Yorkers. Montgomery County Community College, in Pennsylvania, opened its campus as a testing site after another nearby site was damaged in a storm.

“This is kind of all hands on deck,” Spina says. “What do you have? What assets do you have? What resources do you have to help us combat this terrible scourge?”

How is your institution contributing to the “war effort” against the coronavirus? Tell us here.