Wake County is making a mistake with COVID testing sites
On Friday, Wake County officials announced that the county would be phasing out its free COVID testing program by the end of July. It wasn’t a shocking announcement, but it is a disappointing one.
Wakes’s five testing sites have administered 1.5 million tests since 2020. The press release from the county said that they were taking this step because of the prevalence of at-home tests and private organizations, as well as vaccines and treatments for during COVID.
It has also cost $2 million to run the testing program into June, now that federal COVID dollars are almost gone. Prior to this, the entire operation cost around $131 million, with the federal government footing the bill.
The decision comes while cases have been rising for weeks across the state. Wake County has had more than 11,000 documented cases of COVID in the last two weeks, and a 19.4% positivity rate for PCR tests currently. Hospitalizations in the county have been slowly increasing since mid-April.
Neville Eclov, a Wake County resident, says his family has been using the Wake County testing sites to get quicker results than places like CVS and Walgreens.
“I’ve found that the turnaround is, at best, equivalent to the county’s two days,” Eclov says of these other private sites, “or I’ve experienced them taking like a week and a half. And this wasn’t during a surge or anything.”
Wake County was somewhat unique in offering testing from the public health department. In Durham and Orange Counties, the health departments offered free testing through a third party group, and still do. Wake County has a list of other testing sites on the county’s website, but those don’t seem to have government ties. What isn’t unique is the need for continued testing, especially now that COVID cases are, once again, on the rise.
There’s a larger theme here: despite surges in case numbers every few months, governments at all levels have continued to relax COVID protocols. There aren’t any mask mandates in the Triangle. The isolation period after testing positive was shortened to five days in December. There have been no reinstatements of social distancing policies. Instead of keeping a steady defense against COVID, it seems that public health measures are being dropped and the responsibility is on you, the individual, to make sure you don’t get sick or get others sick.
“COVID-19 testing isn’t going away,” Wake County Commissioners Chair Sig Hutchinson said in the press release. “With the abundance of at-home testing kits and other testing locations throughout the community, there will be plenty of opportunities for people to keep themselves safe and healthy.”
While this is true, privatized testing locations have barriers to entry. While Walgreens doesn’t require insurance for a free test, it’s one of the things they ask for when you make an appointment; if you don’t have insurance, you need to provide a driver’s license ID or a state ID number. Even with insurance, doctor’s offices are backlogged and urgent care can be pricey.
At-home tests are available for free through USPS, but you have to order them online. Buying them at the store can be pricey. They aren’t always accurate, and they only detect COVID after a certain period of time.
There also are vaccines and booster shots, but the virus is clearly changing to get around them. Booster shots have made it into the arms of less than half the county. Secondary booster shots haven’t even reached a quarter of the US population over 50, according to the CDC.
It’s not just a Wake County problem, it’s a problem with the entire handling of the pandemic. Eclov mentioned a phrase the Biden administration keeps using, that “we have the tools” to overcome COVID.
“We have the tools, but you as an individual go ahead and figure out how to utilize them all,” he says. “You have access, and that’s not the same thing as providing public health to people who need it.”
Hopefully, Wake County’s decision to move closer to normal doesn’t leave more people sick.
