Some left scrambling to find COVID tests
One area mom launches a pop-up to help others secure quick results from a Houston lab and relieve anxiety as the holidays approach
When Chelsea Geegan’s 11-year-old son had a sore throat and low-grade fever, she couldn’t find a rapid COVID-19 test in her neighborhood.
“His throat was hurting, and he had a fever, so I thought it was strep throat because he gets that about three times a year,” Geegan said of her son’s September illness. “We went to the doctor and it wasn’t strep or flu, but his doctor didn’t have COVID testing equipment.”
When the pandemic started, Geegan said testing sites were set up all over Houston’s Northside and Humble, where she lives with her family. But since the school year started in August, she hasn’t been able to find many locations open or operating.
As negative COVID tests have become requirements when children are sent home sick from school, some Houstonians say rapid or quick-result PCR COVID tests have become difficult to find in the last few months. Still, Houston Health Department and Harris County Public Health say their sites are operational and have capacity to test hundreds of people per day.
COVID testing is available at 30 sites affiliated with the
Houston Health Department, Curative and United Memorial Medical Center, according to Scott Packard, chief communications officer. For now, the city-affiliated testing sites will operate to full capacity for the foreseeable future, he added.
Testing demand tends to follow positive case rate and hospitalizations, Packard said. Before the highly-transmissible delta variant became the dominant COVID strain in Houston, HHD conducted an average of 1,086 tests in July; in August, that number jumped to 3,703.
Harris County Public Health has capacity for 3,000 tests per day at its four test sites, which include two federally-supported sites in Katy and Pasadena, said Jennifer Kiger, COVID-19 division director. The turnaround for a PCR molecular test — considered the most accurate in detecting COVID-19 — is currently 48 hours, and no rapid tests are available at HCPH-affiliated testing sites.
When schools reopened, the county launched a program to test students on-site at a number of schools.
But the Geegan family’s school was not on the list.
Instead, Chelsea Geegan tried to find a testing appointment at CVS, Walgreens and other pharmacies. But everything was already booked.
More than 32 million COVID-19 tests have been administered at CVS pharmacies nationally, according to Monica Prinzig, company spokesperson. “We continue to be able to meet the demand for COVID-19 testing in most locations even with increasing numbers of patients seeking out tests,” Prinzig said in an email.
She didn’t try to find an appointment at either a city or county site, she said. Geegan made the choice for the family to quarantine until they could find tests at a pharmacy, a process that took about 10 days. “I canceled events I had that week because I couldn’t risk it. We had all been in contact,” Geegan said.
Drive-thru and rapidresult testing is available at most locations, as well as tests provided to longterm care facilities and community sites, Prinzig said.
Results from a rapid COVID test, which doctors say are less accurate than PCR molecular tests, can be available within hours, she said. PCR test results, which are handled by third-party laboratories, typically take a day or two to return. CVS Health provides 70 percent of retail COVID-19 tests nationwide.
Over-the-counter COVID test kits are sold at CVS stores across Houston, Prinzig said. But demand is so high, the chain had to introduce a limit on the number customers can buy.
“We’re continuing to work with our suppliers to meet customer demand,” Prinzig said.
Eleven days — 10 days looking for a test and one day waiting for results — after her son’s symptoms appeared, Geegan’s family received negative test results for COVID-19. But she was frightened at the prospect of having to go through the same situation again since her children are not old enough for the vaccine.
She wanted to be an aid to her communities — in the Northside and Third Ward — by expanding her sanitation business to offer free COVID tests at well-known neighborhood locations. Currently, her business Geegan Alliance Health Group, operates one pop-up testing location on North Wayside Drive, which has capacity to test 300 people per day.
Geegan’s business receives testing supplies — nasal swabs, collection kits, tubes and gloves — from Genview Diagnosis, a Houston-based laboratory which also handles the testing result process. The small business owner said offering free COVID tests is not expensive once you secure a partnership with a local laboratory.
Soon, she hopes to open a testing site closer to Humble where she lives with her family.
“When we couldn’t find a rapid or a PCR test, that frightened me — we needed to know (if we were infected),” Geegan said. “Around the holidays, it might be spiking again. Now, we can know.”