Galveston County, UTMB to open free test sites
One week after ending its free drive-thru coronavirus testing, Galveston County and the University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston are teaming up to provide free testing to county residents.
Testing will be by appointment only and free to county residents who provide government-issued identification at three different sites in Galveston, League City and Texas City. County residents may schedule an appointment beginning on May 20 by calling 832-6326731.
“We believe there is still a need for readily available COVID-19 testing and are thankful to be working with UTMB to stand up additional testing resources,” said Mark Henry, the Galveston County judge, in a statement. Henry said that the free testing is made possible in part because of federal funding the county recently received as part of the recent coronavirus relief package passed by Congress.
Ben Raimer, the interim president of UTMB, added the medical branch is “pleased to partner with the county on this initiative.”
The decision to open up testing sites again, comes a week after Galveston County Health District announced it would be ending its drive-thru mass testing sites because demand had decreased and the health district wanting to repurpose some of its staff that was doing the testing to begin doing contact tracing for coronavirus cases. The drive-thru sites were
opened to the public on April 9 in Texas City and later expanded to Galveston and League City. More than 4,800 people were tested at these sites.
Dr. Philip Keiser, the county’s local health authority, told the Houston Chronicle that it was a collective decision with county officials to end the mass testing sites, though acknowledged that there was not “100 percent” agreement on doing so.
“There’s a lot of concerns no matter what we do,” Keiser said. “Basically we’re spending all of our time doing testing and we really need to be doing contact tracing and we need to have some other mechanisms to do it, so this is kind of our first foray into doing that.”
Keiser said the health district had 150-200 people manning the drive-thru sites everyday, including its epidemiologists that were taking time away from doing the necessary contact tracing.
As of Friday, over 23,000 residents in Galveston County have been tested, totaling over 7 percent of the county’s population, according to the county health district.