CVS Opens 45 More Drive-thru COVID-19 Testing Sites in NJ

Another 45 drive-thru free COVID-19 testing locations will open at CVS stores throughout New Jersey as Gov. Phil Murphy encourages everyone to get tested in an effort to return the restart the state's economy.

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State Health Commissioner Judith Persichilli said it will be important to know what percentage of residents have COVID-19 through testing, contact tracing, isolation, and quarantine.

"And that data must come, first and foremost, from a rigorous testing program," Murphy said Wednesday. "Our goal has been to ramp up our testing by the end of this month to where we were conducting 20,000 tests a day, and I noted that that number would not be our ceiling but rather a floor. In mid-March, we were running a few hundred tests a day and we ramped up to 6,000 tests by the end of that month, and in April, we doubled it to 12,000 a day."

Some Walmart and Rite Aid locations also offer testing in New Jersey.

CVS opened testing sites at 11 locations around the state just before the Memorial Day weekend. The testing sites allow people to use a self-swabbing coronavirus test at the drive-thru after registering in advance at CVS.com.

A CVS staffer will watch a person administer the test in their car. The customer leaves the sample in a box that CVS sends to a third-party lab, which will return results in three days.

The chain has 1,000 sites across the country with the ability to collect 1.5 million tests per month.

The additional New Jersey locations: