(Image: Curative)

The White House COVID-19 test kits are in the mail and COVID testing sites around Central Seattle will ramp up to provide more capacity and faster results thanks to a new type of rapid PCR test.

Mayor Bruce Harrell’s office announced the plans Tuesday for the sites operated by for-profit contractor Curative.

The sites located outside Garfield Community Center, at the Paramount Theatre, and at the Washington State Convention Center are adding “expanded capacity” and will later this month add new capability to administer rapid PCR tests that detect viral RNA, “a more direct and sensitive method of detection, leading to higher accuracy of test within 2 hours,” the administration said in its announcement.

• Paramount Theatre, 911 Pine St, Seattle, WA 98101; open 12:00 p.m. – 7 p.m.
• WA State Convention Center, 705 Pike Street, Seattle, WA 98101; open 7:30 a.m. – 3 p.m.
• Garfield Playfield-Tennis Court, 501-653 25th Ave, Seattle, WA 98122; open 7:30 a.m. – 3 p.m.

Seattle’s latest trends (Image: Seattle King County Public Health)

The new capacity comes amid a much hoped-for slowdown in the spread of the virus across King County and in Seattle though officials still warn that masking and avoiding crowded spaces should continue.

Given the ability for the Omicron variant to spread quickly, peaks in cases could form again while other cities around the world have shown a continued and persistent higher level of cases as the Omicron wave slowly declines.

The region’s hospitals, meanwhile, are still facing a surge in new patients from the recent waves of infections.

Meanwhile, the Biden administration’s COVIDTests.gov is now live with a promise of four at-home tests for every household. Orders will usually ship in 7 to 12 days and will begin to hit mailboxes in late January.

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