HealthPartners winterizes drive-up COVID-19 testing locations

BLOOMINGTON, Minn. — HealthPartners continues to be a community leader when it comes to offering safe and efficient testing for COVID-19. This week, HealthPartners began its transition to indoor and winterized drive-up COVID testing sites across the Twin Cities and western Wisconsin. Most of the locations will be moved to off-campus sites to provide an indoor drive-through option, which ensures safety for our colleagues and patients. The locations will be in Oak Park Heights, St. Louis Park, Chanhassen, Bloomington, Hutchinson and Amery, Wis. Drive-up testing sites at our Plymouth and White Bear Lake clinics remain open.

“Regular testing continues to be an important tool for helping limit spread of COVID-19 and drive-up testing has proved to be a safe, effective and efficient way to test for the virus,” said Spencer Rudolf, the regional clinic director at HealthPartners. “We are pleased to have secured locations that allow us to keep this option available as we head into the winter months.”

This milestone reflects yet another major overhaul to how HealthPartners has collected and processed COVID-19 tests, which began at limited sites in mid-March. Since May 1, the health system has offered drive-up testing at eight locations around the metro area and western Minnesota.

“HealthPartners is proud to have been able to increase testing as community demand has warranted,” said Rudolf. “We’re able to collect as many as 2,800 tests per day at our drive-up sites, and have collected more than 250,000 samples since early May. These are numbers that help track the virus in our community and limit its spread.”