Fremont opened a free COVID-19 drive-through testing center Friday morning, following a similar model pioneered in Hayward last week, officials said.

Avellino Labs, a private biotech firm based in Menlo Park, is supplying and processing the test kits, while Fremont is hosting the testing at its Fire Department Tactical Training Center, located along the city’s western edge, at 7200 Stevenson Blvd.

Fremont Fire Department Chief Curtis Jacobson said the city’s testing site is open to everyone and will offer priority testing for people on the front lines of public safety and health care, including police officers, firefighters and paramedics, medical professionals and caregivers.

Jacobson said, they want to provide caregivers the “opportunity to get tested so they’re not either bringing something home from work or bringing something from home into their workspace.”

To determine who should be tested, people will be screened for various symptoms of COVID-19, including a fever of at least 100.4 degrees Fahrenheit.

“We can’t test everybody, we just don’t have that capacity,” Jacobson said.

He said the center will run about 100 tests per day and will be open from 10 a.m. until 5 p.m. each day or until testing runs out. It is currently expected to operate for only three weeks, but it could be extended, he said.

For now, the center will only accept people driving up in a car, but Jacobson said the city is working with a local healthcare provider to help set up another testing site for people who don’t have cars or cannot be driven to the center.

“We have a lot of people that are worried and concerned in our community. Coronavirus is on everybody’s mind,” Raj Salwan, a Fremont City Councilman said Thursday.

“I think being able to have the tests in our community will put a lot of minds at ease. And if they have it, you can tell them, ‘isolate yourself, you have coronavirus.’”

About an hour before the site opened for testing Friday, cars were already beginning to line up near the training center, and by late morning, a steady flow of people queuing in cars waited for their chance at a test.

Fremont’s center went online just after the number of coronavirus cases in California topped 10,000 Thursday morning, according to data compiled by this news organization.

Jacobson said Fremont firefighters helped out for a week at the Hayward Fire Department free testing site and learned some of its protocols.

“While we were gathering the information from Hayward Fire, I proposed the idea to our mayor and council and city manager, and they thought it was a great idea to provide the service,” Jacobson said.

When it opened last Monday, the Hayward testing site was the first of its kind in the Bay Area allowing anyone who met the threshold for testing to have a free test without a doctor’s recommendation.

Fremont is following close behind, as the center is just one of only a few places in the state where governments are teaming up with commercial companies to offer expanded testing options to people unable to get tested through a health care provider.

Hayward officials said Wednesday that the testing site at Hayward fire station No. 7, at 28720 Huntwood Ave., tested a total of 1,324 people during its first seven days, of which 130 tested positive for the novel coronavirus.

Similar to Hayward, Fremont’s city manager signed off on spending nearly $500,000 of city money to pay for the testing and the operation of the center, and Jacobson said the city is expecting to be reimbursed through state and federal disaster relief funds.

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Coronavirus rates soar in college towns as students return to campus We are trying to cast a wider net for the opportunity for people to be tested. We know that the more folks that we are testing, the more ability we have of getting a handle on folks that need to receive treatment, and folks that need to isolate and quarantine,” Jacobson said.

“We thank the City of Hayward for inviting Fremont to join its team, to better prepare ourselves as we roll out our own testing center,” Mayor Lily Mei said in a press release Thursday night.

“We’re all stronger when community partners come together to work on creating a solution.”

To get to the center, vehicles should enter from westbound Stevenson Boulevard, then proceed to Eureka Drive and make a right turn northbound. Vehicles should then proceed forward on Eureka Drive and the line will be forming along the right curb. Access to the screening line is only available by vehicle and may be limited at times to provide for a safe and manageable traffic flow.

Staff photographer Dai Sugano contributed to this report.