As Spokane’s COVID-19 cases surge, people are struggling to find tests
The Spokane Regional Health District said the problem is that supply can’t keep up with demand.
SPOKANE, Wash. — As Spokane County broke its single-day case record multiple times in recent weeks as the highly contagious omicron variant became the dominant strain of the coronavirus, some people are struggling to find available COVID-19 testing dates.
The line at the Spokane Falls Community College proving ground began intermittently winding on itself Monday. A man in the line told KREM he found it easy to get an appointment on Monday, while others in the line had a harder time.
“It was actually quite difficult. I checked online, they didn’t have anything publicly available as of Friday, and obviously that’s not going to work, you know, it has to be right away,” said Jordan Burns, who is in for a decent exam.
According to the booking website, the Spokane Falls free trial location was fully booked from Monday morning through Thursday. The sister location at the Spokane County Expo Center had some Monday afternoon appointments available at short notice, but after that, the earliest available appointment wasn’t available until Thursday.
Those waiting in line at the SFCC site felt the frustration of finding a test.
“Quite difficult in our area. We’re out of Loon Lake and everyone’s out of tests or waiting all day, so I had to come to college,” said Brian Roberts, another person in line at SFCC.
The free public trial sites aren’t the only ones that are fully booked. As of 10:30 a.m. Monday, all but one of Walgreens’ Spokane locations were barred from drive-through testing. Rite-Aid was similar, with the next available date being offered at 10am on January 24th.
Even those willing to pay for a COVID-19 test through an appointment with their healthcare provider have found the process far from easy.
“I called the doctor’s office, they are two weeks away. Emergency supplies are in a few days. Then I even tried calling Rite-Aid and nobody has anything,” said another woman in line at SFCC.
The problem lies in supply, according to the Spokane Regional Health District. SRHD spokeswoman Kelli Hawkins said the problem is being caused by test materials not keeping up with increasing testing demands – a problem that has existed for at least a couple of weeks.
The health district is hoping the federal program, which offers at-home testing starting this Wednesday, will partially solve the problem. The program allows people to order up to four at-home testing kits per household through the COVIDtests.gov website.
Hawkins also said the health district is waiting to hear about efforts being made to create more testing availability in the area. One initiative is being led by Discovery Health, the medical company that operates the SFCC and Spokane County Expo Center testing sites in partnership with the Washington Department of Health. Hawkins said Discovery Health is trying to hire more staff for the testing sites to increase hours of operation.