It shouldn’t be this hard to get tested for COVID-19. Blame goes straight to the top
It shouldn’t be this hard. There’s no other way to say it.
Twenty-two months into our collective COVID-19 nightmare, the difficulty Pierce County residents are facing when trying to get tested for the virus represents failure at the highest levels. We live in a country that has put people on the moon. There’s simply no reasonable excuse — from the Biden Administration on down, even with its still hollow promise of free tests for all — to explain away our current mess.
As Katherine J. Wu, Ed Yong and Sarah Zhang wrote in The Atlantic just last month, “For tests to fulfill their very essential role in the pandemic toolkit, they need to be accessible, reliable, and fast. Nearly two years into the pandemic, that’s still not an option for most people in the United States.”
Pierce County is no exception. But you already knew that. With the omicron variant raging, hours-long lines being reported at local testing sites and nary an at-home test to be found at local pharmacies, the situation has led to no shortage of anger, as The News Tribune’s Debbie Cockrell recently reported.
“It’s taken us two and a half hours to get from Meridian by the blue gate into the testing parking lot,” wrote one social media user who visited the county’s newest temporary testing site at the Puyallup Fairgrounds on Monday.
“The lady guiding cars said it will be another hour or two from where we are now,” the post added.
For many, attention can’t help but turn to two questions: Who’s at fault, and when will the situation improve?
Frustratingly, both yield unsatisfying answers, which is why Kejuan Woods — the person charged with Tacoma-Pierce County Health Department’s COVID-19 response — often sounds like a man caught precariously in the middle.
As a county, Woods told The News Tribune, there are “tens of thousands” of COVID-19 tests available at local warehouses. While the nationwide shortage is real, and various shipping and supply-chain issues have made life difficult, the recent crush at local testing sites isn’t necessarily a result of there being too few tests on hand, Woods argued. Neither is a lack of local preparation, he insisted.
Instead, Woods described what he reluctantly called a “perfect storm.” Driven by the omicron variant, the number of infected people is skyrocketing, as are those deemed to be close contacts. At the same time, last week’s cold and snow compounded the problem, temporarily shutting down a number of testing sites available. Throw in the holidays, and, well, you get the idea.
While Woods stressed there are multiple ways for Pierce County residents to get tested and that not everyone has a horror story, he also acknowledged the justified irritation that exists.
“I’ll be clear, and I think that people know it: It has been difficult,” Woods, who serves as incident commander for Tacoma-Pierce County Health Department’s COVID-19 response, said on Tuesday. “When do we expect (things to improve)? Hard, hard to tell. I mean, we’re talking about omicron. … If we follow the trends, we’re expecting to see a great bulk (of cases) throughout this month of January. If I had a crystal ball, I’d have COVID pegged at this point, but I don’t.”
It’s an unnerving forecast that fits with everything we know — while simultaneously remaining hard to swallow.
Woods said he’s focused on how Tacoma-Pierce County Health Department can help meet the increased demand, including still-formulating plans to open additional temporary testing sites across the county, which he hopes will be unveiled soon. He said his team is doing the best it can, and — in the meantime — urged those who don’t have symptoms and haven’t been identified as close contacts to avoid clogging up the lines for others, recommending at-home testing options instead (again, where they’re available).
“It’s not isolated to our county, or the cities in our county,” Woods said of the nationwide testing face plant, which are my words, not his. “This is something that’s happening everywhere.”
That’s undoubtedly true, but it’s also the problem, and if Woods is too smart or diplomatic to say it, I’ll write it for him:
Snow storms are difficult to predict. New variants present nasty curveballs.
But as we prepare for the two-year anniversary of the COVID-19 pandemic, the fact that we still haven’t figured this out — and that local cities, counties and health departments like Pierce County’s have been left to play catch up — has every right to make people mad.
Biden was supposed to be better at managing COVID-19 than his predecessor, but when it comes to testing, we’re still falling painfully short. It’s also fair to question state and local elected leaders in positions of power who could have done more.
Clearly, our COVID-19 testing system isn’t up to the moment.
It simply shouldn’t be this hard.
This story was originally published January 5, 2022 at 5:00 AM.
