Kansas City offers 500 free coronavirus tests. Within hours, all slots are taken
Four pop-up coronavirus testing sites the Kansas City Health Department announced Sunday are already at capacity less than 24 hours later, the department said Monday.
Kansas City announced plans on Sunday to test 500 residents at the sites from Monday through Wednesday. Significantly, residents did not need to have symptoms to get a test. They only had to register.
“In the first few hours, we had so many people register on the … website, that now all 500 tests/slots are filled,” the health department’s spokeswoman, Michelle Pekarsky, said in an email Monday morning.
She added: “This shows how urgently we and other cities/counties need testing kits and supplies. We will continue to work with the state to get more supplies and coordinate future pop-up clinics.”
Later Monday, Pekarsky said the testing effort had gotten off to a slow start. Some people who showed up hadn’t registered, slowing the line.
“We put together these sites over the weekend and anticipated some hiccups,” she said, “but are most frustrated at the number of people who need testing and could not get it because of the shortage in testing supplies and kits.”
Kansas City is asking residents who couldn’t get tested at a pop-up clinic to contact 3-1-1. The city plans to take that information to the state to show the need for more testing, Pekarsky said.
Kansas City was one of eight areas in Missouri “selected for targeted testing,” according to the announcement.
The City Council last week also allocated $800,000 toward testing and tracing COVID-19 cases in Kansas City.
Officials hoped the clinics would especially help meet testing needs in Kansas City ZIP codes especially hit hard by the virus — 64106, 64123, 64124, 64126 and 64127 — and “medically underserved populations.”
“As the response to the COVID-19 pandemic continues, these longstanding social disparities have the potential to allow the disease to spread undetected,” the department’s deputy director, Frank Thompson, said in the announcement Sunday.
As of Monday, the Kansas City metro had 1,921 cases and 117 deaths, according to data compiled by The Star.
The Star’s Luke Nozicka contributed to this report.
This story was originally published April 27, 2020 at 12:33 PM.
