ROCKFORD, Il. — This Friday, September 23, the SHIELD Illinois community COVID-19 testing site at the University of Illinois College of Medicine, 1601 Parkview Ave., is closing. However, another SHIELD Illinois testing site is opening on the west side of Rockford.
Providence Baptist Church, 2209 Clifton Avenue, will offer free PCR testing for COVID-19 to the general public through a partnership between the Illinois Department of Public Health (IDPH) and SHIELD Illinois that utilizes federal funds. Starting Monday, Sept. 26, the Clifton Ave. testing site will be open from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. on Mondays, Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, and from 8 a.m. to 6 p.m. on Thursdays.
Providence Baptist Church is among SHIELD Illinois’ many testing partners across Illinois, including over a dozen community testing sites and more than 600 K-12 schools.
All members of the community are encouraged to make an appointment online here, though walk-ins are welcome. Masks or face coverings are required at the testing site.
The SHIELD testing site at the University of Illinois College of Medicine in Rockford had a huge impact on keeping area residents safe from COVID-19. Since it opened, the Rockford site ranked first among SHIELD testing sites in the state in the volume of samples collected. From May 13, 2021, to Sept. 12, 2022, the site collected 68,132 community samples. The highest single-day number was 1,114 samples collected on Jan. 10, 2022.
“The UIC College of Medicine Rockford is proud to have served more than 68,000 visitors at our community testing site since it opened in May 2021,” says Alex Stagnaro-Green, dean of the college. “Winnebago County still has a high incidence of COVID-19, so I’m pleased that convenient saliva PCR testing will still be available for free at the new west-side testing site location for those who need it."
Instead of an invasive nasal swab, the covidSHIELD test uses saliva and takes just minutes to collect. Confidential results from SHIELD Illinois are available in 24-48 hours online.
In announcing Providence Baptist Church as a new testing site, church leaders say it’s important to continue to provide free PCR testing at this time. “After two-plus years of learning how to combat the COVID pandemic, we continue to see unnecessary hospitalizations and lives lost,” says Pastor W. Arthur Martin. “It takes a community working together to win against this pandemic, and here at Providence, we are doing all we can to help by offering our facilities for regular testing to our community, in order to educate and help prevent the unnecessary spread of COVID.”
The effort is part of an agreement between the University of Illinois System and the state in the ongoing effort to prevent the spread of COVID-19. Federal funds from the CARES Act and the American Rescue Plan are being used to provide free testing through SHIELD Illinois.
SHIELD Illinois is the University of Illinois System’s in-state, non-profit COVID-testing unit that uses the highly accurate saliva-based PCR covidSHIELD test that was developed at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. For more information, please visit shieldillinois.com.
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