The city is ramping up its COVID-19 testing capabilities starting Monday in an effort to curb a rise in cases as people return from the Thanksgiving holiday.

More than one million travelers nationally passed through security checkpoints on three separate days in the week leading up to Thanksgiving, according to the Transportation Security Administration. These were the highest travel numbers since March, when the pandemic started.

In light of these numbers, Mayor Bill de Blasio emphasized the importance of COVID-19 testing as the city battles the surge in cases it’s been seeing over the past month. The city's infection rate on Monday was 4.69% and the 7-day average was 4.03%.

“Testing is what we are doubling down on now in New York City,” he said at his daily press briefing on Monday. “We have the highest testing capacity we've ever had since the coronavirus began.”

There will be increased staff and mobile units deployed to the city’s busiest testing sites and more than 1,400 self-swab kits will be handed out at rapid testing sites and the busiest hospitals, according to the mayor. The city also opened 25 new testing locations that will run all week. 

To combat the long lines, the city’s Health + Hospitals organization will update its Twitter account three times a day providing wait times for each site and will direct people to the testing sites where the wait time is the shortest, the mayor said. People will also be able to use a new online tool on the city’s Test and Trace website that will provide wait times at the 51 H+H locations across the city, which will be updated every two hours.

Testing is critical to the city’s contact tracing program, which is initiated once a positive test result is recorded. Emerging evidence from the CDC has found that the vast majority of secondary infections occurs within the first five days, according to Dr. Amanda Johnson, senior director of care models at H+H. She also said that the city’s Test and Trace program found in recent weeks that one in five cases of infection were due to household transmission.

To enable proper social distancing, the city’s Take Care program will provide free hotel rooms, meals and medication delivery or resources to safely separate at home for those who need it.