Inslee visits Bellingham’s NW Laboratory, hears these concerns about Whatcom testing demand
Washington Gov. Jay Inslee toured Northwest Laboratory’s facility in Bellingham as part of a stop in Whatcom County Tuesday, Oct. 12.
“The work done by Northwest Laboratory has been critical in our fight against COVID-19. They’ve been strong partners to @WADeptHealth in tracking variants, and currently conduct 8,000-10,000 COVID-19 tests per day,” Inslee tweeted.
In a discussion with Inslee, representatives from the lab and Whatcom County Health Department articulated their struggles, which include hiring enough staff and dealing with the deluge of folks seeking travel-related COVID-19 testing.
“We are in a fairly unique location just being here on the border,” said Greg Thompson, co-health officer for the county’s health department. “I don’t know that any other counties in Washington are dealing with it quite the way that we are, in the sense that about 50% of our testing is travel-related.”
Inslee told the tour group that his office is continuing to pressure the federal government “as much as we humanly can” to open the U.S.-Canada border. He said that it didn’t make sense for border traffic to remain restricted when the B.C. population is just as vaccinated, if not more, than Washington’s.
Though the Washington State Department of Health has paused reporting testing data on its COVID-19 dashboard, Whatcom County’s demand for COVID testing more than tripled in August and September during the fifth surge of the pandemic.
A big part of the reason Whatcom County was able to answer that call was the work of Northwest Laboratory, which operates the county’s drive-through testing facility at Bellingham International Airport jointly with the Whatcom County Health Department.
Currently, people looking to get tested at the airport can expect to face a several-day wait to get an appointment, said Northwest Laboratory Chief Operating Officer Jenny Bull. That’s a change from mid-August, when she said people could typically book a same-day appointment.
Bull told The Bellingham Herald in early September that the laboratory was expanding hours at the airport testing facility and working to train new staff to increase testing capacity.
Finding the staff, however, has proven difficult, Bull said. Northwest Laboratory currently has 334 employees, compared to 499 in February.
The company reduced staff levels this summer as demand for testing came down, Bull said. But now the lab is hiring again to deal with increased demand, with 50 open positions.
“The personnel exists,” Bull said in a group discussion with Inslee during his visit to the lab. “It’s just getting them in here and incentivizing them. It’s a long day to stand out at the airport and swab people all day long.”
Assistance from the state to find and pay staff would be welcome, said Thompson with the county health department.
Northwest Laboratory has also ramped up its women’s health services recently since those tests use the same equipment as COVID-19 testing, Bull said. The expanded services include HPV and Pap tests, which help monitor cervical health, as well as testing for sexually transmitted infections.
Inslee’s tour comes as the lab surpassed completing more than two million tests during the pandemic in late August.
As far as the state’s indoor mask mandate, Inslee couldn’t offer much insight into when it might be lifted, but he touted the importance of the vaccine in ending masking regulations.
The visit to Northwest Laboratory follows a stop at Whatcom Community College.
“Today I’m at @WhatcomCC to talk about their cybersecurity program,” Inslee tweeted. “Earlier this year, they received an award from the @NSF establishing their National Cybersecurity Training and Education Center as a leader in cybersecurity education.”
Inslee was also scheduled to visit the Gardenview Tiny House Village site and the Whatcom County Crisis Stabilization Center during his Bellingham swing Tuesday.
This story was originally published October 12, 2021 at 12:50 PM.
