Isabela Santana Beltrán is a 7-year-old girl who travels with parents back to Chile and had to take a test for COVID-19: “I was afraid because in other countries they do it to the bottom but here they do it slowly.”
After a month of visiting our city, Isabela and her family are going back to Chile, but not before complying with the protocol of being tested for COVID-19 at this testing center in the LaGuardia airport parking lot.
“It is better to prevent to have good health and to seek any type of setback,” says Judith Beltrán, a mother of a family.
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This center, managed by the city government, has been operating for several months in the parking lot of Terminal B and will now become a mobile unit.
This Saturday was the last day that it works with a permanent location. According to the New York City Tracking and Test Corps, they are doubling their mobile fleet and will continue around the airport.
Liseth Santana live in Yonkers and welcomed her family from Chile: “This is my first time here in this site, But I loved it. What’s more, it saddens me a bit that they are closing it, especially now with the new variant, which surprises me “.
And it is that the concern now for many travelers and visitors are the cases of the variant of COVID-19, omicron, already detected in New York. Governor Hochul confirmed this Saturday three new cases of the variant, all in the city, bringing the total to 7 in the five counties, 8 in the state.
“This new variant is scary, so you feel safer knowing that you are negative for the family so as not to infect anyone else,” explains a neighbor from College Point.
This week, President Joe Biden called omicron a cause for concern, but not one for panic. To date, the variant has been detected in 20 different countries, so scientists are working to determine if this variant is more transmissible.
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“Yes, you have to be careful. If at some point this gets out of control, we will no longer have a way to go back to the ‘normal’ label we currently have. So the best thing is to continue testing to prevent the COVID from spreading again, “says another of the Chilean travelers.
The latest statistics show that, in New York State, the percentage rate of the population vaccinated is 68.8%. However, Governor Hochul recommends that citizens continue to practice protective measures to help prevent the spread of COVID and its variants.
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