Three walk-up or drive-thru COVID-19 test sites close this month in Wellington.

One, a drive-thru site at Wellington’s 10-acre park near the Mall at Wellington Green operated by Synergy Diagnostic Services, tested its last patients Dec. 2.

The other two walk-up test sites operated by Curative will close after Dec. 28, Wellington said in a news release. On its website, Curative announced it is closing all of its COVID-19 test sites and moving into health insurance.

The walk-up test sites at Village Hall and in front of Palm Beach International Academy on South Shore Boulevard offered both rapid and regular PCR tests.

For a list of COVID-19 test sites in Palm Beach County, click here.

Nicole Coates, Wellington’s director of emergency management and public safety, lauded Curative at the Village Council’s Dec. 13 meeting, where the council presented a certificate thanking Curative for its partnership.

Coates said that when the first case of COVID-19 was reported in Florida in March 2020, Wellington staff realized they had a way to leverage the village’s resources to help provide essential, critical health care.

“And that’s what we did,” she said.

Curative opened its first testing site in Wellington on Aug. 25, 2021. By October of last year, Curative helped Wellington become one of the first municipalities to offer rapid PCR testing at no cost to the patient.

“That was revolutionary,” Coates said, adding that it helped get results into the hands of patients in two to three hours instead of two to three days.

Curative performed more than 50,000 COVID-19 tests in Wellington, with about 89% of those being rapid PCR tests, Michael Siler, regional manager and director of operations for Curative, told the council. He was joined by Curative site manager David O’Brien.

The highest positivity rate reached in Wellington was about 50%, Siler said. “I’m glad to say at this point it’s lower than a single digit,” he said.

Mayor Anne Gerwig thanked them for their flexibility and and commitment to Wellington. “Thank you for providing that to the community and especially that urgency that helped keep the spread down,” she said.

Before partnering with Curative, Wellington early in the pandemic worked with Premier Family Health to provide COVID-19 testing at the Village Park Gymnasium and then the Wellington Community Center.