COVID testing crunch strains essential workers : Shots

As demand for testing ramps up, community clinics and nonprofits struggle to keep up with the need. These groups have run testing sites throughout the pandemic in low-income and minority neighborhoods, like this one in the Mission District of San Francisco, Calif., from UCSF and the Latino Task Force.

David Odisho/Bloomberg via Getty Images

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David Odisho/Bloomberg via Getty Images

As demand for testing ramps up, community clinics and nonprofits struggle to keep up with the need. These groups have run testing sites throughout the pandemic in low-income and minority neighborhoods, like this one in the Mission District of San Francisco, Calif., from UCSF and the Latino Task Force.

David Odisho/Bloomberg via Getty Images

Alejandra Felix, a housecleaner and grandmother from Richmond, Calif., had a cough and a sore throat. So she did the responsible thing in COVID times and called in sick.

Her symptoms were mild, but she wanted to get tested for COVID before she went back to work, so as not to spread the virus. She works for herself, and wants to keep her clients’ trust.

“First I need to know that I’ve taken all the precautions. I need to be sure it’s only a flu,” she says.

Felix had spent all morning driving around to pharmacies in Richmond and surrounding cities, looking for rapid antigen tests. There were none to be found.

The COVID testing site at her neighborhood clinic, Lifelong Medical Center, was fully booked. She called and called but waited so long on hold that she got discouraged and hung up.

For Felix, a week with no work means losing up to $800 dollars in income.

“That’s a lot because I need it to pay the bills,” she says with a nervous laugh. “I feel desperate because I have to cancel all my work this week. If they give me an appointment it’ll be tomorrow or the next day, so I have to cancel everything.”

Across the country, the spread of omicron has people scrambling to get tested for COVID. The lines are long, appointments get scooped up fast, and rapid antigen tests are hard to find. This problem is hitting essential workers – often people of color – particularly hard. Unlike many office workers, they can’t work from home, and their companies haven’t stockpiled tests. The result is lost wages or risking infecting coworkers or family members.

Renna Khuner-Haber, who coordinates Lifelong Medical’s testing sites, says the people who most need convenient home tests can’t get them. The disparity is glaring, especially in the Bay Area, where tech companies send boxes of rapid antigen tests to workers who have the option to work from home in a surge.

“Rapid tests — they’re not…