Houston suburbs push for COVID-19 testing
Montgomery County leaders felt frustrated. Residents kept asking why the county of 600,000 didn’t yet have a free public coronavirus test site.
The county and public health district wanted a test site. They just couldn’t get any test kits. The health district requested 1,000 kits from the state, but they say the state only gave them six.
This scenario repeated in suburban counties around Houston. Chambers County officials said they received five test kits. In Liberty County, officials said they got none.
Texas Department of State
Health Services spokesman Chris Van Deusen says they provided more than that, but concedes the point: It wasn’t a lot.
Test materials had “just been in short supply,” Van Deusen said. “We are still working on it.”
So the pushed-aside suburbs — concerned that it was harder and less convenient for their residents to get tested — had to find other solutions, or fight back. They wanted to understand how the disease was spreading, and protect those living there. Dozens in these counties have already died.
Four COVID-19 test sites have been operating across Houston and Harris County, where most
of Houston sits. The federal government provides test kits for those sites, which are meant to serve the entire region.
But the region, of course, is sprawling. A Conroe resident has to drive 40 miles to reach the northwest Houston site. A person in Anahuac has to go 20 miles to get to the closest county test site in Baytown.
Seven counties surround Houston, and not all of their residents have the means — or the will — to travel that far. Data released last weekend showed people who lived closer to the federallybacked test sites were more likely to get tested.
Residents in outlying counties might not have medical insurance or funds needed to cover a health care provider’s test, either.
As of Friday, about 70 percent of the region’s confirmed coronavirus cases were in Harris County, but Harris County is home to 70 percent of the region’s population. These neighboring counties account for nearly 2,000 other positive cases combined.
So, officials in the suburbs got scrappy. Galveston County opened a site with test kits from the local
University of Texas Medical Branch. Fort Bend opened a site in partnership with a local health center.
The Montgomery County Public Health District and Chambers County sent out news releases pointing a finger at the state. (Both had also tried to order test kits from other suppliers and found them on back order.)
“Like several other smaller counties, we have been denied the resources to enable us to offer free tests to our residents,” read the Chambers release, sent Thursday.
“We know this is frustrating for residents of Montgomery County, and we share your frustration,” read the Montgomery County Public Health District release, sent Tuesday.
The Department of State Health Services as of Friday had distributed more than 8,000 items for COVID-19 testing, which they had on hand for checking for illnesses such as flu and strep throat.
They also recently received a shipment of new supplies.
But the materials had to be shared across the state, said Van Deusen, the spokesman. Supplies had been allocated to 67 of the state’s 254 counties.
Officials in Waller and Brazoria counties hadn’t pushed for kits, they said. Brazoria was deferring to its health care system and other agencies to do the testing.
In Waller County, officials were relying on the federally backed site in nearby Katy.
It would be a challenge for Waller County, which has neither a hospital nor a health department, to sustain its own test site — even though the county judge wished they had one.
“If we have resources available to us, and they’re working for us, we want to use those,” said Brian Cantrell, the county’s emergency management coordinator, referring to the Katy site.
Harris County applied for kits from the state to help supply its new mobile test sites. Workers are using vehicles once used to provide vaccines to set up COVID-19 testing around the county.
The county purchased enough kits from another source to get started Tuesday, but it is a finite supply, said Michael McClendon, director of public health preparedness and response in Harris County.
Still, by the end of the workday Friday, things were looking up for some.
Updated numbers of supplies being sent from the state showed Fort Bend and Montgomery counties — the most populous in the region — receiving hundreds of swabs and test tubes.
Misti Willingham, spokeswoman for the
Montgomery County Public Heath District, said she was encouraged by their recent conversations with state officials.
Jason Millsaps, who oversees the county’s emergency management, said the tests were needed to understand better how the illness was spreading.
On Friday, Gov. Greg Abbott announced some social distancing restrictions would begin to lift. He said testing would expand but did not provide specifics for how.
In Galveston County, the spokeswoman for the health district said the shortage issue raised the question of what role public health should play in fighting COVID-19.
“If it is testing and surveillance,” Ashley Tompkins wrote, “then test kits need to be made available to all health districts.”