After trying futilely for three days to get a COVID-19 test, David Chouinard finally found a drop-in site in San Francisco’s SoMa District and stood in a line of 40 people Wednesday afternoon, determined to learn whether he had contracted the rapidly-spreading coronavirus.
“There were no appointments available at all,” said Chouinard, who lives just down the road and got to the testing site almost an hour before it opened. “So I came here.”
Chouinard planned to visit his grandmother for New Year’s but developed a cough over the weekend and wanted to make sure he wouldn’t expose her to COVID-19.
“It’s frustrating,” he said. “I wanna see my grandma for the holidays. I miss her.”
He is one of many Bay Area residents scrambling to make timely testing appointments as the omicron variant skyrockets across the state and demand for the once plentiful tests soars.
In addition to safely gathering with family and friends to usher in the new year, many holiday travelers want to ensure they’re not spreading the highly contagious variant that is already starting to put pressure on the region’s hospitals.
But instead of getting quick results, they are spending an agonizingly long time searching for appointments.
Most county and state-run testing sites, as well as the region’s largest health care providers, don’t have available appointments until after the New Year holiday weekend.
The combination of too few testing sites and the second biggest surge of COVID-19 cases since the pandemic began almost two years ago has created a “perfect storm” of demand for testing, said Contra Costa County health officer Sefanit Mekuria.
“We saw it last week, and it’s continuing this week as well,” Mekuria said.
The problem is exacerbated by holiday schedules: Many Bay Area testing sites were closed on Christmas and will be closed on New Year’s Day, San Mateo County Public Health spokesperson Preston Merchant said, while some others have been closed this whole week or have shortened their hours because of the holidays.
Making matters worse, Curative — a major community testing provider across the Bay Area — has experienced supply and staffing issues due to COVID-19 quarantine protocols, Merchant said.
Before this latest surge, many of testing sites set up by health departments early in the pandemic had been either closed or downsized as priorities shifted toward vaccinations.
But now, with limited staffing and renewed demand, Mekuria said health officials have to divide up their staff and resources between testing and providing vaccinations.
In San Francisco, the SoMa drop-in location saw 190 walk-ins the week before Christmas, said site host Marissa Macayan. It’s the most the testing site has seen since opening up at the beginning of this year during last winter’s big holiday surge.
Santa Clara County’s Fairgrounds, one of the region’s main testing sites, is also seeing massive demand. Within the last couple of weeks, the county increased the site’s capacity from 1,800 tests per day to more than 3,500 tests. Still, as of Wednesday, the soonest someone could make an appointment was for Jan. 3.
The picture may brighten soon, however. Health officials across the Bay Area say they’re making plans to expand their testing capacity in the coming weeks.
Santa Clara County, for instance, will be transitioning a vaccination site in San Martin to a drive-through testing site on Jan. 10. Contra Costa County is also looking to open more sites starting next week and has been told California will be doubling capacity at four state-run sites in the county as well.
County health departments are also starting to distribute at-home test kits they’ve received from the state. Santa Clara County is focusing on giving the 160,000 kits it received to partner agencies that serve communities with high case rates such as East San José and Gilroy, according to a spokesperson.
In the meantime, officials are asking people to act cautiously to prevent the further spread of the virus.
“If a person can’t access a test for any reason and they are symptomatic, they should stay home regardless of their vaccination status,” Neetu Balram, Alameda County Public Health spokesperson, wrote in an email. “If they are exposed and unvaccinated, they should also stay home.”
It’s a predicament that has complicated the plans of people across the Bay Area, such as Chelsea Mowery. The 31-year-old San Jose resident woke up Wednesday morning — the day before she was set to leave with her friend on a trip to Tahoe — with a headache and sore throat.
Hoping to get a diagnosis before she left for her trip, Mowery searched for a COVID-19 test through the Santa Clara County Health Department and her health care provider, Kaiser Permanente, but no appointment was available until next week. She checked a few grocery stores for rapid tests, but they were all out of stock.
“It’s really disconcerting,” she said. “I think it just speaks volumes to how horribly we’re handling this whole pandemic.”
Since she can’t get a test for another six days, Mowery will have to act as though she’s infected even though she may not be. That means not only canceling her trip to Tahoe but also taking full-time care of her mother, who has early-onset Alzheimer’s disease, instead of sending her to her regular daycare program where she might spread the virus.
“I’m really disappointed,” she said, adding that the waiting is likely to give her additional anxiety. “It’s really going to put a strain on me.”
Source: www.mercurynews.com