But not everyone got the word. People lined up early Thursday morning, even though officials had no intention of opening the site.
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"I was here yesterday for like 12 hours and they told me come back tomorrow. And then I get back here this morning so I don't have to wait in a super long line, hella early, and they're like 'oh it's closed, we're not doing testing today,'" said Jada at 8:30 a.m. Thursday. She did not want to give her last name.
"Unfortunately late last night around 10 p.m. it became obvious they wouldn't be able to open the facility today for testing. We're trying to work through those issues right now. It is temporarily closed for today," Alameda City Manager Eric Levitt said Thursday morning.
Levitt said it is an issue over insurance between two test site partners. He says the city was not involved in the contract.
"It's a contractual issue between the property owner and CityHealth, who provides the testing," Levitt said. CityHealth is a private company.
Levitt says the property owner of Marina Village Research Park wanted proper insurance for the pop-up site.
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"They just want proper protection in allowing their facility to be used," Levitt explained.
The city is helping with logistics like traffic control and acknowledged officials should have told people at the site Thursday that testing had been shut down.
"That was an error. I apologize severely for that. It should have been posted at the entrance. It wasn't. I did find that out early this morning," Levitt said Thursday.
The site opened Wednesday and was the first one to open in Alameda. CityHealth promises results in 15 minutes and says they are 97% accurate.
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The CDC says the antigen test offered by CityHealth isn't as accurate as a PCR test and is more likely to produce false negatives. But that didn't deter people from wanting one Wednesday when 380 people made an appointment for a test and another 400 walk-ins showed up.
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Erica Casillas got in line at 4 a.m. Thursday. "I'm sure some of us are positive and here we are exposing ourselves some more. And then I did see some kids as well sleeping in the car. So yeah everybody is going out of their way and then they are seeing tests not available," she said as she walked out of the site at 9 a.m.
She says workers from CityHealth took people's names Thursday and told them they will have first priority when they open back up. Officials have not said when that will be.
"They don't know if they are going to be available tomorrow but hopefully that will help get us first in line," Casillas said, who needs the test for work.
"We have worked very hard to get testing available and we finally thought we were successful. And we were for a day and I think we will be long term. It's just we have this logistics issue. We apologize to those who were inconvenienced," Levitt said.
CityHealth did not respond to our request for comment.
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