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Happy Monday! Hopefully you are sheltering in place. But if you have been out lately, you likely haven’t seen the drive-thru COVID-19 testing sites in parking lots that President Donald Trump touted in March.
Flanked in the Rose Garden by executives from Walgreens, CVS, Walmart and Target, Trump announced almost a month ago that his administration would help major retailers set up drive-thru coronavirus testing sites at their locations.
Trump’s vision has yet to fully materialize.
Not only did Trump vastly overstate Google’s work but several news outlets also noted that as the calendar flipped to April, the major retailers involved in the testing effort had combined to set up just five drive-thru testing locations, despite running thousands of stores in the U.S.
Mia Heck, a spokesperson for the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, said the agency is still working with the national retailers to add drive-thru sites, but she did not provide specifics. Representatives from those companies told us more sites would be coming.
As of April 9, Walgreens had just one drive-thru testing site in operation and 15 preparing to open. CVS had three more locations running, and Walmart had two. Target hadn’t opened any.
Rite Aid, which joined the effort after the March 13 press conference, had one location set up.
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Alex Mahadevan is a senior multimedia reporter at MediaWise. He can be reached at amahadevan@poynter.org or on Twitter at @AlexMahadevan. Follow MediaWise on TikTok.
