COVID-19 testing capacity strained as localities struggle with vaccine staffing
It’s not just that local health departments are struggling to ramp up a massive vaccination campaign. The effort also threatens to cut away at another priority in the fight against coronavirus: testing.
Health officials across the country are facing tough decisions on whether to close testing sites or cut back on hours because they don’t have enough funding or staff to administer both vaccinations and testing.
- In Stamford, Conn., Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) said he had spoken with health officials who “don’t have enough money right now to be able to both keep up their testing and distribute vaccine, so they’re going to have to make a choice.”
- Los Angeles closed its large testing site at Dodger Stadium, converting it instead into a vaccination site. The city acknowledged the move would “temporarily reduce testing capacity in L.A. County,” but on the other hand would “more than triple the number of daily vaccines available to be dispersed to Angelenos.”
- Collier County, Florida, closed most of its testing sites to make way for vaccine distribution, the local NBC affiliate reported. Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) has directed the state to find testing sites that can be shifted to vaccination locations.
“I’m hearing that every place in the country,” Nicole Lurie, a former assistant secretary of Health and Human Services and an adviser to President-elect Joe Biden‘s team, said on a call with reporters. “There’s just not enough personnel, enough bandwidth [to do both].”
The big picture: The tensions illustrate how local health departments that have long raised the alarm about funding shortages are now scrambling to secure resources for multiple monumental tasks against the pandemic at the same time.
