This [1] testing site in my state opened back in July (five months ago) and is dedicated to COVID testing only. These sites[2] opened in May (seven months ago) and are still going strong. They are co-located with a pharmacy (usually in the parking lot).
While they may be "temporary" as in "when the pandemic is over, they will be disassembled and the area will revert to its natural state", we are already hitting the six month threshold that is usually offered as the minimum standard for permanence. If anyone thinks they know how long these will be here, they are frankly just guessing. These places are useful to tag, and they could be here for...months? a year or more? It's anybody's guess as to whether vaccination centers will follow a similar pattern as testing, but it is reasonable to figure out now, while the issue is topical, how such a thing should be tagged given the potential for a sufficient level of permanence. Anti-vaccine sentiment is a real thing in the United States, and there is every reason to believe that a mass vaccination will start slowly and take months or more, and not just a few weeks as has been suggested. [1] https://www.providencejournal.com/story/news/coronavirus/2020/07/21/new-drive-up-coronavirus-test-site-opens-at-ri-convention-center/42521793/ [2] https://www.providencejournal.com/news/20200528/cvs-to-open-10-new-coronavirus-testing-sites-in-ri On Thu, Nov 26, 2020 at 9:59 AM Paul Allen <pla16...@gmail.com> wrote: > On Thu, 26 Nov 2020 at 02:35, stevea <stevea...@softworkers.com> wrote: > >> I'm in California, where it's almost cliché we love our cars and car >> culture, but it is true that not only here but in many USA states, we have >> "drive-thru" COVID-19 testing centers. > > > In the UK we don't have much of a drive-thru anything except maybe some > fast-food outlets of American origin. Yet all the covid-19 testing > centres I'm > aware of are strictly drive-thru. As in you're not allowed to turn up on > foot, > because if you're infected you may pass it on to other pedestrians you walk > near. And they're drive-thru because the swabs are taken in the open. > The swabs are taken in the open because there is far less risk of > transmission outdoors than indoors. > > >> I would guess that vaccination centers that are also "drive-thru" are >> likely soon (early 2021?), too. > > > The same reasons that make the test centres drive-thru apply to > vaccination centres. Eventually, when we have herd immunity > (one way or another) indoor vaccination may be feasible (but > probably undesirable). The health workers will be vaccinated > first so they won't be at risk either way, but these places will > be handling large numbers of people and having them all wait > indoors is a good way of infecting lots of people. > > >> These being mapped with "indefinite duration" seems a bit much (sorry, >> Brian), but they are usually more of a "pop-up" kind of thing: one-time or >> "only on Saturdays" or something like that. > > > There is a temporary, short-duration, won't be there for long, test centre > just > popped up in my town because a couple of weeks ago some idiots decided > to celebrate the end of firebreak restrictions by going to the pubs and > ignoring social distancing completely. Fifty-five cases came of that, and > three hundred contacts have been traced. I expect it to go away in a few > weeks if the outbreak gets under control. I'm not confident the outbreak > will be under control very soon because a lot of the celebrants were > shop workers. > > But as well as that pop-up test centre because of the sudden surge, there > is an existing test centre. That's based at the leisure centre that was > converted to an emergency overflow hospital several months ago. I only > found out the test centre was there a few days ago because we try to > keep their locations secret, so I probably won't map it. > > Vaccination centres are going to handle more people than test centres > do because nearly the entire population will have to be vaccinated but > only a very small fraction of the population is tested (we ought to be > testing everyone at least once a week, but my country's government > is somewhat incompetent). > > -- > Paul > > _______________________________________________ > Tagging mailing list > Tagging@openstreetmap.org > https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/tagging >
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