PROVIDENCE, R.I. (AP) — A coronavirus testing site opened Friday in the parking lot of a Rhode Island baseball stadium.

The goal is to have the site at McCoy Stadium in Pawtucket test about 500 people per day. The site is part of the state’s strategy of boosting testing to even those who are asymptomatic to battle a rising tide of COVID-19 cases. Appointments are required.

The site is a partnership between the state and New England AccuReference Medical Lab.

The testing process took about five minutes from check-in to swab on Friday, WJAR-TV reported. Results should be available within 24 hours.

McCoy was home to the Triple-A Pawtucket Red Sox for more than half a century, but the team is relocating to Worcester, Massachusetts, for the 2021 season.

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POSITIVITY RATE ON THE RISE

Rhode Island’s seven-day positivity rate and seven-day average of daily new cases continue to rise.

The state’s seven-day rolling average of the positivity rate has now risen over the past two weeks from 3.64% on Nov. 5 to 6.19% on Thursday. State health departments are calculating positivity rate differently across the country, but for Rhode Island the AP calculates the rate by dividing new cases by test encounters using data from The COVID Tracking Project.

The seven-day rolling average of daily new cases in Rhode Island has surged over the past two weeks from more than 491 on Nov. 5 to almost 884 on Thursday, according to project numbers.

With 961 new confirmed cases reported Friday by the Department of Health, the state has now surpassed 48,000 positive cases since the pandemic began. The state also reported six additional deaths Friday, for a total of 1,294 virus-related fatalities.

The number of patients in the state’s hospitals with the disease fell to 288 as of Wednesday, the latest day for which the information was available, down from an adjusted number of 301 the previous day.

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PRISON OUTBREAK

Nearly 200 inmates and staff at Rhode Island’s state prison have tested positive for the coronavirus in the past week, most of them in maximum security, according to the state Department of Corrections.

Of the 169 total cases, 147 inmates and staff at the Adult Correctional Institutions’ maximum-security unit at the state prison are newly infected. Several lower security units reported only one or two positive cases.

Movement has been modified in those units to mitigate the spread of the virus, prisons spokesperson J.R. Ventura told The Providence Journal on Thursday.

“This protocol has proven effective managing the spread in previous instances of COVID-19,” Ventura wrote in a post on the department’s Facebook page. “The safety of everyone inside our facilities is our top priority. We are working around the clock to make sure we keep everyone safe.”