The City of Salem will open a walk-up rapid COVID-19 testing site in downtown Salem in the Peabody Essex Museum’s Connect Building, 135 Essex Street, across from the Visitor Center and downtown parking garage for the month of October.
Curative, the provider that managed the Commonwealth’s MassVax vaccination site in Danvers and other parts of the state earlier this year, will operate the site with trained staff hired from the Salem area.
The rapid testing site will be open from 12:00 noon to 8:00 p.m. on Wednesdays, Thursdays, Fridays, and Saturdays from Thursday September 30th through Saturday October 30th, as well as Sunday October 31st. On October 30th and October 31st the rapid testing site will be relocated to inside PEM’s Groups entrance on Essex Street. On October 31st testing will close at 5:00 p.m. There are no public restrooms at the testing sites. Any changes to the testing site hours will be posted at www.salem.com/testing.
Pre-registration is strongly encouraged for anyone planning to receive a COVID-19 test at this site. A link to pre-register for appointments will be posted at www.salem.com/testing on Monday, September 27th. Those who pre-register will be able to select a time window for their appointment and avoid waiting in longer lines at the testing site. Pre-registration and appointments are not required, however walk-in testing may have longer lines. When pre-registering via the link above, if all appointment times are shown as full, please check back again later as additional appointments will be added on a rolling basis. Those who test at this site will receive an email confirming their test results within 1-2 hours.
The City is funding and providing this rapid testing site to help those attending and organizing large events to more easily satisfy the Board of Health’s order requiring a negative COVID-19 test administered within 72 hour of entry to any large indoor event in Salem this October. If an individual is attending a large indoor event where proof of a negative test is required for entry, they may show the email from Curative with their negative test result for the required proof of a negative test, provided that the test was administered within 72 hours of the event.
This site is one of several free COVID-19 testing sites throughout Salem, including two free “Stop the Spread” PCR testing sites currently operating – one of which is located downtown at St. Peter’s Church next to the downtown parking garage and the other available as a drive-through site at Salem High School, which is one of the satellite shuttle parking lots for October. For a complete list of COVID-19 testing sites in Salem, please visit www.salem.com/testing.
“I am very grateful for the work and efforts that our Health Department staff have put into planning this program over the last several weeks,” said Mayor Kim Driscoll. “And I’m also deeply appreciative of the PEM team and their willingness to help host this important testing site in October. Salem has strived to be a leader in responding to this pandemic based on evidence and science, and we see this program as another step in that direction. This new testing site will help us support our event operators and ensure the safety of event guests, employees and volunteers at venues, their families, and our community at large.”
