Future of statefunded coronavirus testing sites unclear after August.
Santa Clara County making contingency plans if funding stops
The future of more than 100 state-funded coronavirus testing sites across California will be up in the air at the end of the summer, stirring concerns that hard-pressed counties may be forced to fill in the gaps themselves.
Gov. Gavin Newsom rolled out the sites in March and has contracts with providers Verily Life Sciences and OptumServe through August. But as the state pivots to a new testing strategy — one more focused on using private providers and testing at-risk essential workers — it’s not clear whether, or in what form, the existing locations will continue operations throughout the next stage of the pandemic, county and state officials say.
Jeff Smith, Santa Clara County CEO, said the county’s testing team is making contingency plans in the event that state funding stops or shifts, particularly at the East San Jose PAL Stadium and Santa Clara County Fairgrounds locations. But Newsom’s office has given no definitive update about what could happen after August, he added.
The state-funded sites combined have performed about 16% of Santa Clara County’s tests so far, according to county data, making them the third-biggest provider in the county, just after Kaiser Permanente.
“It’d be really disappointing if they disappeared,” Smith said. “We would need to set up another site in the East San Jose area because that’s a big focus area … which would be challenging because our staff is pretty much stretched thin at this point.”
A California Department of Public Health spokesperson declined to share specific plans for the Verily and OptumServe sites but said that the state is “looking at all options,” including changing the sites’ scope to test “groups of Californians that are most impacted by COVID-19.”
The state released new testing guidelines this month to prioritize hospitalized patients and those presenting symptoms, as opposed to anyone in the general public. In a recent news conference, California Health and Human Services Secretary Mark Ghaly called on private hospitals, clinics and labs to offer expanded coronavirus tests to vulnerable communities.
“I appreciate the partnership with all of the health plans across California, with our trade partners, who help us make sure we do this in a responsible way and patients who need care and need testing can get it within their
routine delivery systems,” Ghaly said.
Santa Clara and San Mateo counties were home to the original Verily sites, which opened hastily in mid-March to limited patients before expanding to 105 locations statewide. They’ve since encountered a host of criticisms from other local officials in Santa Clara, namely that vulnerable communities — particularly those that speak Spanish and Vietnamese — face language and access barriers to testing. The PAL site in particular operated below
capacity for weeks after it opened.
Similar problems at other testing sites led the state to threaten funding cuts even before contracts expired, including in Contra Costa County, the Los Angeles Times reported this month. And at busy state-funded testing centers, residents have waited longer than 10 days for results as commercial labs struggle with supply shortages.
Santa Clara County Supervisor Joe Simitian, who has been particularly vocal in calling for more widespread testing, said discussions surrounding the Verily and OptumServe sites could help officials review
what did and didn’t work during the first months of the pandemic.
“Roles are evolving, and that’s to be expected,” Simitian said.
Until there’s more clarity, Santa Clara County officials will keep weighing alternatives, including more effective ways to reach people in East San Jose, where largely Latinx neighborhoods have seen far higher rates of coronavirus infections and deaths than other parts of the county.
“We don’t have anything firm because we have to wait to see what the state does,” Smith said, adding, “We certainly as a county can’t afford to lose a testing site on the east side.”