Denver Clinic Serving Latinos Adds Spanish-Speaking Drive Through Testing For Community

DENVER (CBS4) - Clinica Tepeyac offers a long list of health services to Denver's Latino Community. Now, they're joining the fight against coronavirus by offering their own community-based drive through testing site for free.

Clinica Tepeyac has a new COVID-19 drive through testing site for Denver's Spanish-speaking community.

"What we've heard from patients is a sense of relief being able to get the test," said Dr. Pamela Valenza, Chief Health Officer for Clinica Tepeyac.

Azucena Galarza has been a Clinica Tepeyac patient for 6 years. Her family is one of the first to utilize the service.

"We came because we had symptoms of COVID-19. My husband has had them for the last three weeks," Galarza told CBS4's Andrea Flores. "We wanted to make sure that everything was good, and we wanted to get the test to confirm if we had it or not."

Galarza says large scale testing sites, like the one at the Pepsi Center, doesn't exactly fit her family's needs.

"We went to other places, and there was a process, there were more papers, there were things to go through, and this seemed like an easy option," Galarza said.

Testing is done next door to Clinica Tepeyac at the Globeville Community Church. All testers are bilingual or Spanish-speaking.

"We have patients who are scared to go somewhere else, who didn't want to go another health center that they weren't a part of, where they had to show identification or information" Dr. Valenza said.

Eighty percent of Clinica Tepeyac's patients are immigrants. Seventy-five of them are uninsured.

"Making sure that we're able to give those services to that community, to fill that need, is really an essential part to who we are as an organization," said Dr. Valenza.

Clinica Tepeyac's drive-through testing site is by appointment only. You don't have to be a patient of theirs, or be insured.  Tests are offered Tuesday and Thursday for now, but they hope to add more days as community interest grows.