How are Whatcom’s increased COVID infection rates, border reopening impacting test site?
With Whatcom County’s entering a delta variant-induced fifth wave of the COVID-19 pandemic already straining area testing sites, the opening of the Canadian border to non-essential travel earlier this week has exacerbated the problem, Whatcom County Health Director Erika Lautenbach said.
The testing site at Bellingham International Airport, which is operated jointly by Northwest Laboratories and the Whatcom County Health Department, can test up to 600 people per day.
But even that does not seem to be enough lately and has forced officials to triage those who are symptomatic for COVID and those getting tested for other reasons, such as travel.
“Our site in partnership with Northwest Labs at the Bellingham airport is at full capacity — up to 600 people a day, and there are wait times,” Lautenbach said during an online briefing Wednesday, Aug. 11. “We are opening up more slots. We are trying to differentiate between folks who are symptomatic and folks who wish to go over the border.
“We want to make sure people who are symptomatic have easy and very fast access to testing so we can address those, but the border and the need for the PCR to cross the border have exacerbated an already increasing rate of testing in our community.”
As part of the requirements for vaccinated Americans to cross the border, Canada is requiring a negative test result within 72 hours of arriving.
And who’s feeling that strain of the increased demand for testing the most? The people doing the testing.
“With the increased testing needs they are putting in long days in hot weather and people are not always kind,” Northwest Laboratories Chief Operating Officer Jenny Bull told The Bellingham Herald in an email. “While we see lots of friendly folks, we are also seeing threats, profanity, insults, deliberately running over signage.
“Generally this behavior comes from people that show up without a scheduled appointment. We do not have staffing capacity to schedule appointments on-site and people needing testing should plan ahead, visit www.testdirectly.com and schedule their appointment prior to going to the airport.”
Bull said Northwest Laboratories is working with the health department to increase testing hours and staffing to create more opportunities, with the hope to be able to offer testing at the airport between 7 a.m. and 6 p.m. Current hours are 11 a.m. to 1:45 p.m. and 3 to 6 p.m. daily.
The lab, itself, will have no problem keeping up with expanded hours and more tests.
“Our lab still has plenty of open capacity,” Bull wrote. “At times over the past 18 months, we were seeing in excess of 20,000 samples per day and have completed just under 2 million tests since the pandemic began.”
Bull added that Northwest Laboratory is hiring for a number of positions.
As they have most of the past 18 months, Patients should still receive their results within 12 to 24 hours, according to Bull, who added “we ask that they please wait at least 24 hours before calling the lab looking for results. The increased testing has also brought an increase in calls.”
Though the Washington State Department of Health’s COVID-19 Data Dashboard has said negative testing data is behind since July 30, the increase in testing demand was beginning to be seen at the end of July. Between July 23 and 29, Whatcom County averaged 550 tests per day, up from an average of 362 tests per day just two weeks earlier (July 9-15). Test positivity for those two ranges also increased from 2.6% July 9-15 to 4.2% July 23-29.
“I can tell you that roughly 9% of patients we saw in July and now in August have Canadian addresses and are testing for the purpose of border crossing and we intend to continue to make that testing available to our friends across the border as well as our community members as long as is needed,” Bull wrote. “We have seen a significant increase in our drive-through appointments at the laboratory and we associate this directly to symptomatic patients as a doctor order is required to test at that location.”
