Despite an order to stay at home in much of California and a call from health officials to avoid traveling amid the worst coronavirus outbreak to date, many people are still entering and leaving Los Angeles International Airport.
In an effort to make the trip as safe as possible, LAX opened a site for rapid coronavirus testing on Thursday.
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4:05 pm, December 31, 2020An earlier version of this article said that coronavirus testing at Tampa International Airport began on Thursday. The airport began offering tests in October and on Thursday announced that the program would be extended.
Justin Erbacci, chief executive of Los Angeles World Airports, said the airport supports current health recommendations. “But we know that there are people who are traveling and there are people who have essential trips,” he said. “We want to have this place to help those people who are traveling to travel with more health and safety.”
Aviators who make an appointment in the newly built laboratory, located in front of Terminal 6, will receive the results in three to five hours. The laboratory, located in a shipping container, is processing about 250 to 300 rapid tests per day, with plans to increase it to 1,000 daily tests.
Additional test locations are in Terminal 2 and Tom Bradley International Terminal, which will provide results within 24 hours.
The tests, known as PCR tests, are administered with a nasal swab. Each costs $ 125 and the results are provided electronically. Appointments are strongly encouraged for all three sites, but appointments for rapid tests are filling up particularly quickly, said Erbacci.
A trio of interim test sites opened at the airport in mid-November, providing results within 24 hours. About 14,000 tests were administered on these sites.
The airport plans to run rapid antigen tests in about a week, officials said.
Although coronavirus testing is not a prerequisite for flying out of LAX, some destinations – including Hawaii – require negative PCR tests before traveling. Erbacci said that testing on-site at LAX is a convenient way to facilitate travel to these destinations.
Other airports – and some airlines – are also testing passengers. Tampa International Airport began offering tests to all passengers arriving and departing on a walk-in basis in October and on Thursday announced that the program would be extended to the new year, with tests expected to continue for several more months .
Airlines, including United Airlines, American Airlines, Hawaiian Airlines, JetBlue Airways and Alaska Airlines are offering test kits sent to the passenger’s home or quick tests performed at or near airports.
Although local airports have seen a steady increase in the number of travelers determined to spend the Christmas holiday with family and friends, travel has not increased as much as the authorities predicted.
Air travel from December 17 to 29 represented about 30% of what it was during the same period last year, said Heath Montgomery, a spokesman for LAX. This fell short of forecast by airport authorities in November, when they estimated that the total number of passengers during this period would be around 50% of last year’s count.
Travel declined during the first two weeks of December, after an increase before Thanksgiving, Montgomery said. The numbers increased again at the end of the month, with December 23 marking the second busiest day of the year – losing to the Friday before Thanksgiving. The pre-Christmas trip saw just over 43,000 passengers at LAX security checkpoints, about 40% of airport traffic on the same day last year.
The latest coronavirus wave and the new home stay order, which was recently extended to southern California, “suppressed what could have been,” Montgomery said of the number of travelers.