WORCESTER, Mass. - At the start of the new year, if you wanted to get tested for COVID-19 at the Mercantile Center, you were probably in line for well more than an hour with several hundred people.

In just two weeks, however,UMass Memorial Health has gone from testing 1,500 people daily to just over 600.

"It's definitely a relief to the staff," said Michelle Muller, who is program manager for the 'Stop the Spread' initiative in Worcester. "To not have that pressure on us. Because we were feeling pretty bad about having people wait for so long."

Around 3:00 p.m. on Tuesday,, there wasn't a single person in line to get tested in downtown Worcester.  

What You Need To Know

  • COVID-19 testing has dropped significantly at the Mercantile Center, with staff testing just more than 600 people Monday (compared to 1,500+ two weeks ago)
  • During parts of the afternoon Tuesday, there was no line for testing downtown
  • The Mercantile Center will begin offering vaccines three times a week starting in February

"I think the bottom line is that the numbers for positive patients are starting to finally come down," Muller said. "I think the need for testing, people feel like there's not a need so much anymore."

Muller points to the holidays as a reasoning for the massive lines just weeks ago, as well as the highly contagious omicron variant.

"That's why I think it came so quickly, the surge," Muller said. "You know, it kind of took everybody by surprise. We were kind of reading about it. I feel like people don't believe until it actually hits their community."

But as school districts approach February vacation, they're preparing for another bump in testing.

"I think people are going to get tested before they might go away," Muller said. "Then coming back from that, too."

But Muller says now they feel better prepared if there’s higher demand for testing. "It's amazing," Muller said. "We're finally staffed, ready to go."