Testing capacity to expand in San Mateo County

Officials announced the opening of a new COVID-19 testing site at the San Mateo County Event Center on Wednesday, adding to the 10 sites already sponsored by the county. The new site, operated by the private vendor Virus Geeks, will open Friday, Jan. 7, and will run daily from 7 a.m. to 4 p.m.

The walk-up clinic will be appointment only and those without appointments will be turned away, according to the county press release.

Hours at standing clinics will also be expanded. A clinic at the Ted Adcock Community Center in Half Moon Bay will begin operating three days a week and appointments on Wednesdays will nearly double from 132 to 258 slots for the rest of January. Those appointments are slated to open next week.

Hours of operation at a five-day testing site at College of San Mateo will also be extended from eight hours to 12 once staffing becomes available, the release said.

With the new and additional testing, capacity at county-sponsored sites will grow from 8,500 tests to more than 10,500 tests a week, according to the release.

“With a nationwide shortage of COVID tests now, particularly at pharmacies, this shows an incredible effort to do all we can as a county to meet the demand for testing and keep our residents safe from the omicron variant,” Supervisor David Canepa said in the release. “Increasing capacity at the Event Center and other county testing sites will be a welcome relief for those who want to keep their families safe during this surge. This effort must and will continue until COVID and all of its variants are behind us.”

Private sector responds

Two of the largest medical providers in the county, Sutter Health and Kaiser Permanente, are also feeling the urgency for testing from its members. Kaiser said online appointments have been increased in response to the omicron variant and Sutter said new appointments are added online regularly.

Similarly, representatives from three commercial pharmacies, Rite Aid, Walgreens and CVS, said the companies are also trying to meet what they described as unprecedented demand, especially for at-home antigen test kits.

“This holiday season, we saw increasingly high demand for rapid testing across our locations,” the Rite Aid representative said. “Like other retailers, we too are experiencing demand that is outpacing supply and in-stock availability changes regularly.”

Walgreens said it is working with its lab partners to expand testing capacity without extending result times and the merchants have implemented limits for the number of self-administered tests each customer can purchase.

Underserved communities, schools

Rapid antigen tests will also be available through a county-sponsored clinic in San Bruno starting Monday, Dec. 10, according to the press release. Appointments for the 500 tests will be required.

Additionally, the county will be purchasing 50,000 at-home kits containing two tests to be distributed in areas at high risk for contracting the virus and to first responders, according to the press release.

Similar measures are being taken by the state to provide greater testing opportunities to schools, areas of great concern as students return back to in-person classes after the holiday break. Boxes of two self-administered antigen tests are being shipped to counties across the state to be distributed to students at public school sites to help districts detect potential cases before spread can occur.

County Superintendent Nancy Magee said in a press release last week that tests have already been received by the county and are being delivered to districts for student use. Additional on-campus testing opportunities have also been made possible through a partnership with County Health.

Patricia Love, the spokesperson for the San Mateo County Office of Education, shared appreciation for the state and local support in an email but noted state-sponsored antigen tests were not made available for students in private, faith-based or preschool programs.

“The state moved quickly to get us tests for public school students, and we have been distributing them. We are very grateful for the state’s leadership and fast action on testing,” Love said. “We just wish that the state had provided home test kits for San Mateo County students in our private and faith-based schools as well as preschools.”

County Public Health Director Marc Meulman said officials recognize the demand for testing is high and shared confidence the collaborative effort to boost test availability will alleviate strain on the system as soon as next week.

“It’s a bit of a full-court press of everybody trying to do what they can to meet demand,” Meulman said. “We’re really hopeful in the next week or two we’ll see a substantial difference in what’s available to meet that demand.”

Visit the County Health website at smchealth.org/testing-contact-tracing for more information on testing opportunities. Visit CVS’ website at cvs.com/minuteclinic/covid-19-testing, Walgreens’ website at walgreens.com/findcare/covid19/testing?ban=covid_vanity_testing or Rite Aid’s website at riteaid.com/pharmacy/services/covid-19-testing for information on testing through those companies.

sierra@smdailyjournal.com

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