The state wants to increase COVID-19 testing to reopen. What that could mean in Whatcom
Washington state wants to have 20,000 to 30,000 COVID-19 tests conducted a day as part of Gov. Jay Inslee’s phased reopening of the economy and daily life.
What that number will look like in Whatcom County is still being determined.
“We are currently working on a goal metric for testing capacity, in conjunction with DOH (the state Department of Health). We will report out on that as soon as we are able to,” Claudia Murphy, spokesperson for Whatcom Unified Command, said in response to questions from The Bellingham Herald.
Inslee has said that what he called a gradual, safe return to public life amid the COVID-19 pandemic depended, in part, on having testing widely available for residents who may have contracted the new coronavirus coupled with having enough workers and volunteers to interview those who tested positive in order to find their close contacts.
In recent weeks, the Whatcom County Health Department has said that there are enough supplies and equipment locally to expand testing so that even those with mild symptoms could, and should, get tested. That’s a change from the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic, when testing here and elsewhere in the U.S. was severely limited because of the lack of supplies.
Earlier this month, the Whatcom health department’s daily data dashboard recorded a surge of more than 1,228 negative test results in three days ending May 15. Officials believed the likely reason for the jump was a data catch-up in the electronic Washington Disease Reporting System rather than a big increase in testing.
On Friday, May 22, the Washington State Joint Information Center, noted that there were two issues affecting data reporting on testing in Whatcom County.
“The first is that about 11,000 negative lab results have not yet been entered into our data system. The second is that about 27% of negative test results do not have an assigned county. These two issues are impacting some counties disproportionately, including Skagit and Whatcom.
“The impact is an artificial elevation of the percent positive in those counties. DOH is working to resolve these two issues,” said the center, which is organizing the state coronavirus response.
Even as the ability to test more Whatcom residents grows, the county health department said it isn’t planning to change its testing guidance to one that recommends widespread testing that would include people who don’t have symptoms.
“At this time, no. The cost to do widespread testing is currently too much to outweigh the benefit,” Murphy explained in an email to The Bellingham Herald. “At around a $100 a test, it would cost millions of dollars to test every person in the county just once. Repeat testing would be needed, so that’s not just a one-time cost.”
Whatcom County has more than 229,000 residents, according to 2019 U.S. Census estimates released on Thursday, May 21.
Murphy added: “That’s part of why we’re focusing on testing people who show symptoms, then working with their close contacts to limit the spread to other people, and rapidly responding to new clusters of disease that crop up.”
The Whatcom County Health Department does test people who don’t have symptoms if they are close contacts of someone who tested positive for the new coronavirus or when there’s an outbreak or cluster in a long-term care facility.
Another challenge with testing someone who doesn’t have symptoms is that if the test comes back negative, it doesn’t mean that someone won’t contract the virus that causes the respiratory illness on their way home or even a day or two later, according to Erika Lautenbach, director for the Whatcom County Health Department.
“We recognize there’s more capacity but we also don’t want to overwhelm the system and not be able to test folks who are symptomatic because we opened it up to asymptomatic individuals,” Lautenbach added.
Asymptomatic describes people who don’t have symptoms.
As for broader testing, Murphy said a health care coalition was working to develop a community testing strategy “with clear asks/goals for community clinicians to scale up our local testing capacity as needed.”
But people who don’t have COVID-19 symptoms can get tested in Whatcom County because Northwest Laboratory in Bellingham has started offering it for workers at the request of companies.
That service is seen as an important step in reopening Whatcom’s economy.
The lab started testing Whatcom County residents who had a doctor’s order at the end of March and has been ramping up its services since then. On April 20, it started offering drive-thru testing for those receiving a medical procedure.
The pre-op screening had to be ordered by patients’ doctors.
