The large-scale free coro­n­avirus test­ing site at the Pep­si Cen­ter is sched­uled to shut down in Octo­ber and is reduc­ing its num­ber of dri­ve-thru lanes start­ing Sunday.

The announce­ment comes on the same day Gov. Jared Polis said at a news con­fer­ence that the num­ber of peo­ple get­ting test­ed is going down, lead­ing to an uptick in the past week in the state’s pos­i­tiv­i­ty rate.

In the last cou­ple of days, sites across the state were test­ing a total of 5,000–7,000 peo­ple per day, when before that they were test­ing in the 10,000–12,000 per day range, Polis said.

He encour­aged Col­oradans to get test­ed at one of the free test­ing sites across the state, includ­ing the Pep­si Cen­ter, if they have symp­toms or have been exposed to some­one who was sick. Ear­ly iden­ti­fi­ca­tion is cru­cial, rather than wait­ing for hos­pi­tal­iza­tions, he added.

In late July, pub­lic offi­cials were try­ing to find ways to increase state test­ing as a nation­al back­log at state labs delayed test results. Ear­li­er that month, the site had to close ear­ly and change its lim­it for tests per day as demand exceed­ed capacity.

City and Coun­ty of Den­ver offi­cials said the city will instead focus on com­mu­ni­ty-based test­ing sites with the clo­sure of the Pep­si Cen­ter loca­tion. They rec­om­mend Col­oradans use those sites or get test­ed through their pri­ma­ry care doctors.

“The Pep­si Cen­ter site pro­vid­ed the broad, region­al test­ing capac­i­ty need­ed ear­ly in our response, to stand in the gap to give the city time to build out a com­mu­ni­ty-based test­ing pro­gram,” said Robert McDon­ald, exec­u­tive direc­tor of the Den­ver Depart­ment of Pub­lic Health and Envi­ron­ment, in a state­ment. “With that accom­plished, the city can focus its test­ing resources where they are most effec­tive, at a com­mu­ni­ty lev­el in high­ly impact­ed and under­served neighborhoods.”

Start­ing Sun­day, the lanes for test­ing at the Pep­si Cen­ter will go down from eight to four. Peo­ple who want to get test­ed are encour­aged to reg­is­ter ahead of time through Sept. 30.

To reg­is­ter or to find oth­er test­ing sites around the state, go to www.denvergov.org/covid19testing.