Disability rights groups want more access to COVID-19 testing
Earlier this month, county leaders in Miami-Dade and Broward rolled out drivethrough testing sites for residents who have symptoms of the deadly coronavirus, designed to make it easier for people who are too weak or too frail to find out whether they have contracted the disease.
The testing sites, however, may exclude the very people most susceptible to COVID-19, the pandemic sweeping South Florida and elsewhere: elders or disabled people who can’t drive and can’t wait in long lines.
Two advocacy groups for Floridians with special needs, the Tallahassee-based Disability Rights Florida and Miami-based Disability Independence Group, are asking the mayors of both MiamiDade and Broward to ensure that people with disabilities are given the same opportunities for testing that others have.
In letters to Broward Mayor Dale V.C. Holness and Miami-Dade Mayor Carlos A. Gimenez dated April 8, the two groups said that the drive-through testing protocols were discriminatory toward disabled people, and that the two counties have, thus far, failed to make arrangements for special needs residents who can’t access the testing sites.
“Some people with disabilities might be at higher risk of infection or severe illness because of their underlying health issues,” the letters said. “Individuals with underlying health conditions are at a higher risk of infection or severe illness from COVID-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus. Many individuals with disabilities may not have access to non-emergency transportation to allow them to travel in person to a testing site.”
“Many individuals with disabilities have complex self-care needs, or require assistance with their activities and instruments of daily living, which prevents them from travel or waiting in long lines.”
The letters added: “Individuals with disabilities are entitled to accessible COVID-19 testing. This includes mobile testing for persons with disabilities who cannot go to the drive-thru testing centers with the same availability as those who do not have disabilities.”
Myriam Marquez, spokeswoman for Mayor Gimenez, said: “I spoke with Deputy Mayor [Maurice] Kemp, who has been working with Fire Chief Alan Cominsky and Jackson Health System on the home testing plan for home-bound seniors and the disabled of any age who are having symptoms in MiamiDade County [except City of Miami because it has a home-testing program for seniors who are city residents].”
Marquez said the county plan “will be rolled out starting Monday.” She said the testing number will be publicized.
Kimberly Maroe, a Broward spokeswoman, did not respond to a request for comment.
Alice Garcia’s mother lives in an elder care facility in Tamarac that offers both nursing care and assisted living. Garcia’s mom, Patricia Sutterlee-Carpenter, suffers from dementia, has trouble feeding herself, and, as a result of other complications, has been in hospice care for more than six months, Garcia said.
Garcia, who lives nearby, said she first began to worry last month, when news broke that residents of another Broward facility, Atria Willow Wood in Fort Lauderdale, had died from complications of COVID-19. Garcia called the home’s staff repeatedly, “and every time they would advise everything was fine,” she said.
Garcia visited Sutterlee-Carpenter, 81, the day before all elder care homes were quarantined. Facility staff told her that residents and staff were monitored regularly for symptoms of the disease, and Garcia has been given regular updates since, in which staff has said “the residents were fine, and they were taking” precautions to protect frail residents.
But on April 6, Garcia received word that one of the home’s residents had died from exposure to the virus, she said.
“I have been very worried,” Garcia said, “as my mom is ill, and I have been calling requesting for my mom to be tested for COVID-19, and I have been advised that the facility was not testing the residents.”
Garcia said she was told she could take her mother to a testing site herself. “But because of her conditions, she is not able to sit for hours in a car, and I cannot be similarly exposed, if she is sick.”
People with special needs have watched the coronavirus crisis unfold with particular dread: First, many physical or intellectual disabilities also can lead to significant medical complications, some of which badly exacerbate a COVID-19 infection. Many people with Down syndrome, for example, suffer from heart disease and epilepsy, and they are prone to infection. People who sustained neurological injuries frequently have seizure disorders.
Disabled people in other states watched anxiously as state and medical leaders released protocols for rationing medical equipment and medications that explicitly permitted withholding care to patients with severe physical or intellectual impairments.
“These are folks that are most at risk for COVID-19, and should be tested, and their caregivers should be tested,” said Matthew Dietz, who heads the Disability Independence Group. “The failure to do these tests until the symptoms are vividly apparent, and the person is hospitalized and dying, only serves to spread the virus to others [in elder care homes] and other health care workers.”
“This is more pernicious than rationing ventilators in a hospital,” Dietz said. “In this circumstance, the government is making an affirmative decision not to test and render care to these individuals because they cannot make it to a testing facility.”