NEW YORK (WKBW) — New York Governor Andrew Cuomo announced Saturday he will sign an Executive Order allowing independent pharmacists to conduct diagnostic coronavirus testing to help meet new laboratory capacity.
"I assume, and my educated guess, is that independent pharmacists will take us up on this," Cuomo said.
Cuomo said there are 5,000 pharmacies in the state, some of the national chains have already been doing this, but your local drug store can now become a collection site. It would quickly ramp up the state's testing capacity.
Due to increasing testing capacity, the state is also expanding testing criteria to include first responders, health care workers and essential employees.
Cuomo said the pharmacies would act as the collection sites for the samples and they would send the samples to the labs to conduct the tests.
You can watch Cuomo's Saturday press conference below.
