Oakland International Airport. (Photo courtesy of Wikipedia)

Free, rapid-result COVID-19 testing will begin next week at Oakland International Airport for employees and the public, airport officials said Tuesday.

Testing will begin Oct. 6 at the North Field terminal complex at 9070 Earhart Road in Oakland in coordination with CityHealth Urgent Care, which will do the testing.

Results will be available on the spot or through CityHealth’s web portal. CityHealth is HIPPA complaint, airport officials said.

“The Port of Oakland is everyone’s port and OAK has been the people’s airport since 1927,” Bryant Francis, Port of Oakland director of aviation, said in a statement.

All Oakland airport employees including tenant airlines, concessionaires and ground handlers, can be tested. The public can also get tested by scheduling a time through CityHealth’s website at https://bayareacovid19testing.com.

People who present a current, official Oakland International Airport security credential can get tested from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. daily by appointment.

Oakland airport officials encourage travelers planning to go to Hawaii under the state’s pre-travel testing program to use the free rapid-result testing at Oakland International before their trip.

Under the program, which begins Oct. 15, travelers who enter Hawaii and provide written proof of a negative COVID-19 test within 72 hours of their final leg of departure will not have to quarantine for 14 days when they arrive.

For people not able to get tested beforehand, day of departure testing will be available, according to airport officials.

Keith Burbank is currently a fulltime reporter covering Alameda County and Oakland news for Bay City News. He has also worked on the Data Points project for Local News Matters, finding trends and stories about the region through data. In 2019, he was a California Fellow at the USC Annenberg Center for Health Journalism, producing a series about homeless deaths in Santa Clara County. He worked as a swing shift editor for the newswire for several years as well. Outside of journalism, Keith enjoys computer programming, math, economics and music.