We opened our drive-thru to support COVID testing
April 26, 2020
Dr. Omri Padan | Chairman & Owner of Alonyal | Israel
In Israel, closed drive-thrus are still serving communities as testing sites.
Access Opening our drive-thru to support COVID testing in Israel | McFamily video with audio descriptions on YouTube.
Even with restaurants closed, our McDonald’s is still serving our community.
In Israel, with health centers being over-run, we turned our local McDonald’s into a quick, convenient & safe testing site.
There was a clear need in my community once the COVID-19 pandemic arrived. Our McDonald’s restaurants were forced to stop serving food, hospitals were in need of safety equipment, and the community was looking for more testing sites. We decided to continue to serve our community – in new ways.
We had been donating 5,000 meals a day to our hospitals – it was and is important to serve those serving our community day in and day out. We also recognized that hospital protective equipment was imperative and something that could be scarce, so we provided a $3M shekel donation to hospitals to purchase such equipment.
All together, we are [intending] to give a quarter of a million free meals to hospitals. We also decided that those hospitals needed finances to buy protective equipment and donated $3M shekel.
COVID-19 testing has been difficult to come by. When we noticed that increased testing could save lives, my McDonald’s restaurant launched an initiative that brought more testing to our neighbors by converting restaurant drive-thrus into testing sites. When the COVID-19 pandemic hit our country, we were able to pilot and launch a program in partnership with local healthcare company Clalit that brought crucial testing to patients in a quick, convenient, safe and familiar location: our McDonald’s drive-thru.
The drive-thru effort was a success, easing the influx of patients at our local healthcare centers, and offering our customers and community members a quick, convenient and safe alternative to getting tested elsewhere.
At some points, we were at full capacity with seven drive-thru lanes serving as COVID-19 testing sites. We also made it a point to provide free meals to those in the community who needed one. We will continue to do our best to serve members of our community who are in need.