Castlight Report – Location, location, location – Where retail clinics like CVS and Walmart choose to set up testing facilities will make all the difference in our ability to safely get back to work.

“Castlight performed an analysis of our comprehensive COVID-19 test site finder to examine states’ capacity to collect enough COVID-19 tests to safely re-open the U.S. economy.Safely re-opening the U.S. economy will require a substantial increase in COVID-19 testing. There is broad agreement the United States needs additional COVID-19 testing capacity to begin to reopen the economy and return to work safely. According to experts, at a minimum we need the ability to test roughly 1 percent of the U.S. population (3 million people) every seven days to get there. Current testing levels are just over half that pace. On the surface, most states would appear to have adequate collection capacity. 46 of the 48 contiguous states have enough testing sites to test 1 percent of their population every seven days. Each testing site can collect a range of between 32 and 480 tests per day depending on the type of testing site (retail clinic, standalone, hospital, or pop-up testing site). Only Kentucky and Colorado do not have enough sites overall to test one percent of their population every seven days. But testing sites are distributed unevenly within states, leaving wide swaths of citizens vulnerable. An analysis of county-level data shows that 38% of metro counties (those with populations at or greater than 50,000) and 68% of rural counties (with populations under 10,000) have no testing sites at all. Retail clinics could be the answer to closing this gap in test coverage. A number of retailers have announced plans or begun to open testing sites across the country. Many of these retailers have a wide geographic footprint, many operating stores in locations that currently do not have any or adequate testing sites. Each retail testing location can collect an average of 200 tests per day, potentially helping many counties reach the 1 percent threshold…”