Balloon Fiesta Park COVID-19 testing site reopens

ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. – As many people plan on visiting family and friends for the holidays, it’s important to take extra steps to protect yourself from COVID-19.

The New Mexico Department of Health is doing what it can to make it easy to get tested for COVID-19, including adding more COVID testing sites. Now that the Balloon Fiesta crowd is long gone, COVID-19 testing has returned to Balloon Fiesta Park.

By going to curative.com you can select "Book now," enter your zip code, and then you can choose from multiple testing locations.

“You gotta have the peace of mind that you are not doing something more to your community or more importantly your family by spreading this you know this virus,” Curative Director of Operations Blake Lackey said.

Curative recently reopened their Balloon Fiesta testing site to try and see as many people before the holiday as possible.

“It is the ideal location because everyone responds well to it – it’s open, you don’t have huge lines, people can drive up, it’s easy to use and we have had great support,” Lackey said.

It’s an easy process to get yourself tested. Once you are handed the testing kit, you open both the testing swab and the container, then you swab both nostrils for 15 seconds each, and finally, you secure the sample and give it a few shakes.

Then you are good to go. The whole process takes about 10 minutes.

Since reopening the Balloon Fiesta site they have done more than 6,000 tests at this location, with over 400 of them done Monday.

“It’s a pretty good indication that the community is responding well to that location which is what we want we want more testing,” Lackey said.