Surge strains availability of tests in Danbury area
DANBURY — While prepping for family gatherings, cooking for holiday meals, and packing for vacations, residents in the greater Danbury area are clamoring for COVID tests, often to no avail.
They’re showing up at hospital emergency rooms and clearing out pharmacies in search of rapid tests. They’re overwhelming local testing systems and seeking advice in Facebook groups. One Danbury Urgent Care saw a Christmas Eve test line that stretched out the building doors. Daily positive cases in Danbury have hit triple digits twice since Dec. 21. Those two times were the first since January.
Connecticut, like the rest of the country, is struggling to meet a surging demand for COVID-19 tests. It’s the same story in most towns: limited tests for an ever-growing line. And
health providers are expecting even greater volumes searching for tests in the coming weeks as cases continue to surge.
New Milford Mayor Pete Bass said their health department’s testing site was seeing “unbelievable demand” last week and through the weekend. In fact, there were so many people coming to them for tests that it closed the clinic to non-residents, prioritizing testing for New Milford and Washington residents, Health Director Lisa Morrissey said.
And tests that would usually come back in about 72 hours or less are now taking roughly five days to return.
That meant that New Milford residents who tested on Tuesday or Wednesday were still waiting for results on Christmas Day. Morrissey expects to see the impact of those delayed turnaround times in the next few weeks with further positive cases.
“We know that people who did not have their results in hand were still gathering,” she said.
While New Milford is able to offer their own test site, other towns have to refer their residents to Danburybased sites or local retail pharmacies.
One Danbury-area health provider, Connecticut Institute for Communities, Inc. (CIFC), reported a large increase in test requests specifically from asymptomatic exposure and travel, as well as an inundation of calls from non-patients. The demand was so great that the health provider set up a recording machine on their phone line to provide information while freeing up the line for patients in need of immediate care, said Katie Curran, CIFC CEO and president.
“If our experience last year post-holiday and what is happening in other parts of the country is any indication, demand for testing will most definitely increase in the coming weeks as a result of holiday gatherings and exposures (and additional travel requests),” wrote Curran in an email to Hearst Connecticut.
“If our experience last year post-holiday and what is happening in other parts of the country is any indication, demand for testing will most definitely increase in the coming weeks as a result of holiday gatherings and exposures (and additional travel requests).” Katie Curran, Connecticut Institute for Communities, Inc. CEO and president
Plan of action
In response to incongruous testing supply and demand, Gov. Ned Lamont announced a plan on Monday to send three million COVID-19 at-home rapid tests across the state, in addition to six million N95 masks. The test kits will start being distributed on Thursday.
“There are three simple and effective interventions to fight off the current surge of COVID-19 from the Omicron variant – vaccination, masking, and testing,” said Connecticut Public Health Commissioner Manisha Juthani in a press release. “We will be distributing two of these — masks and tests — so that our communities can work as quickly as possible to get past this surge.”
CIFC also expects to receive its first order of about 450 at-home kits for their patients later this week, and about 900 more the following week.
Bethel First Selectman Matt Knickerbocker experienced first-hand the time it took to schedule a test before gathering with family for the holidays, and said that it’s important for residents to go ahead and schedule an appointment if they know they’ll need a negative test.
“Don’t wait. Go online and get your appointment,” he said. “It might take a few days.”
But don’t go to local hospitals — specifically emergency departments — a Nuvance spokesperson said in a statement Monday. Nuvance runs both Danbury and New Milford hospitals.
“Please utilize the emergency department for medical emergencies ... There are many convenient and less expensive options now like retail pharmacies and athome tests. This will help prevent the spread of the virus to others and healthcare workers who want to be available to our communities,” they said.
Government exposure
For the most part, town hall functions across the greater Danbury area have not been affected by the sudden rise in cases and holiday surge.
Bethel and New Milford have had some staff put on quarantine, but these have not disrupted the day-to-day town operations, as many employees can effectively work from home, the first selectmen reported. Bethel’s mask mandate has helped workers in the small office spaces stay healthy, with no cases reported in the offices, First Selectman Matt Knickerbocker said Monday.
“We are thinly staffed to begin with, and we really can’t afford to have a lot of people out quarantining because they’ve been exposed,” Knickerbocker said.
Redding, on the other hand, had to close its town office doors to the public this week due to a high volume of cases among its employees. The offices are available by appointment only as of Monday, and masks are required in town buildings regardless of vaccination status.
Bass showed no indication of implementing a mask mandate, and said that he and Health Director Lisa Morrissey were closely monitoring the situation. The two had a conference call Monday afternoon to discuss the situation and the coming weeks. Anyone who is unvaccinated has to wear a mask in town buildings.
Brookfield still has a mask recommendation but no requirement in town buildings, which drew criticism from members of the Democratic Town Committee last week. First Selectman Tara Carr issued new guidance on Dec. 10 “highly encouraging” all residents to wear a mask in public buildings, but not requiring them to do so.
Still, Knickerbocker expects some other local leaders to follow suit with their own mandates in the coming days and weeks. He is expecting another COVID case rate increase when the state releases its weekly dataset on Thursday.
Looking ahead
Morrissey is hoping to soon expand testing capabilities for the five towns she currently oversees, as well as purchase additional at-home test kits for residents using state funds.
“I know that it’s a trying and very challenging time,” Morrissey said. “The fact that people are trying so hard to get tested really speaks to the fact that people are taking this seriously.”
She advised those who have any symptoms but are stuck waiting for a test or results to assume they’re positive and isolate.
“The number of cases that we’re seeing, it’s just been skyrocketing,” Morrissey said. “We haven’t seen levels like this since 2020.”