Kansas City to scale back free COVID-19 tests temporarily and reorganize program
For months the Kansas City Health Department has offered hundreds of free coronavirus tests four days a week throughout the city. Now, officials say, they have to slow the program — briefly — to streamline and better organize it.
Frank Thompson, the department’s deputy director, said officials were working to set up just one testing event next week, on Thursday. The full testing program resumes Aug. 24
Starting then, tests will be offered at six to eight regular locations rather than rotating among 30 sites. The break, Thompson said, will give the safety-net clinics that gather samples for the city time to reorganize their teams and dedicate staffers to the testing program.
The city set up the community testing operation on the fly this spring, Thompson said.
At the beginning of the pandemic, he said, clinics provided staff whose offices were shut down. Clinics have since reopened their operations and need that staff.
“So in many instances, these folks that are out there doing community testing are then, on the days that they’re not doing the testing, having to go back into the clinic, do the follow-up from the testing and do their regular job,” Thompson said.
“And that’s just not sustainable.”
The department has been running 450 to 500 tests per week.
When the department resumes testing four days a week it also plans to consolidate into six or eight locations targeted in ZIP codes hit hardest by COVID-19. Residents don’t have to live in those ZIP codes to get tested. Those sites haven’t yet been identified.
He said the department also can no longer rely on schools as testing sites after Labor Day because not every school district has made it clear how and when in-person classes will resume. Schools account for about half of the sites the department has used so far.
Thompson said the department hopes to increase its testing capacity after the break, but the safety net clinics that do the testing rely on private labs to process them.
Those labs, he said, had improved their turnaround time, which helps contact tracers intervene and prevent someone with COVID-19 from continuing to spread it. At one time, though, Thompson said the labs were taking 10 days to report results.
It could sometimes be 20 days between the time someone develops symptoms and requests an appointment, waits the week it takes to get one of the city’s slots and then wait several more days for results, Thompson said.
At that point, “disease investigation and contact tracing really doesn’t do much.”
“If we’re not able to get to individuals fairly shortly after the diagnosis or the onset of symptoms, then the people that they’ve been in contact with and may have spread it to have already then been in contact with other individuals and spread it to them,” Thompson said. “And then potentially those individuals have already spread it to more.”
“It’s hard to ever catch up.”
Thompson also emphasized that the city is “not going to test our way out of this problem.”
“The thing that is going to turn the curve for us around … is people wearing their mask, maintaining social distance, washing their hands and avoiding crowds,” he said.
Residents who have symptoms or have been exposed to a coronavirus case can also seek testing from Truman Medical Center. Thompson said the department would also be posting alternative testing sites on its website during the hiatus.
Thompson said it’s important to wait long enough after exposure to a COVID-19 case to get tested — ideally seven to 10 days — to avoid a false negative. The department would like people to wait at least five, or at the absolute minimum, three days, he said.
Residents in certain ZIP codes can make appointments for testing. Walk-up testing is also available. Appointments can be made by calling 311 starting Aug. 20 for the following week.
To find out more about Kansas City’s response to the coronavirus, you can text “COVIDKC” to 888-777 or visit the city’s website at kcmo.gov/coronavirus. The federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has information at cdc.gov/coronavirus, and the Missouri Department of Health and Senior Services has a hotline at 877-435-8411.
This story was originally published August 13, 2020 at 12:50 PM.
