At-home COVID-19 rapid tests in short supply in Fresno. When will more be available?
The stubborn delta variant of COVID-19 since late summer and the rapid march of the highly contagious omicron variant over the past month are creating a surge in demand for at-home “rapid test” kits for the coronavirus.
In Fresno on Monday, spot checks of a half-dozen stores from national pharmacy chains and major retailers revealed that no at-home test kits were to be found. Most had been sold out for one to two weeks, and there is no certainty about when more would arrive to meet the local demand.
The rapid-antigen tests are more popular compared to molecular PCR testing not only because of the convenience of not having to drive to a testing site and wait in line, but also because results are typically available in as little as 15 minutes. PCR tests generally have a turnaround time of one-to-three days for results.
When more at-home tests do arrive, most stores are putting a cap on the number of tests that a person can buy as a means of trying to preserve the supply for as many customers as possible.
At a Walgreens store at West and Herndon avenues in northwest Fresno, a pharmacy clerk said the store had not received any stock of rapid tests for a couple of weeks, and the same was said to be true at every other Walgreens store in the Fresno area.
Two different CVS stores in northwest Fresno also had no testing kits available. At Herndon and Milburn avenues, the last kits sold out on Sunday. A few miles to the east, at Herndon and West avenues, the shelf had been empty for about a week.
A Rite-Aid store at Shaw and West avenues sold out of its stock of testing kits several days before Christmas. More have been ordered and are supposed to arrive Wednesday, if they arrive at all, a clerk said.
Two different Walmart stores and a Target store were also bereft of test kits on Monday.
A shortage of kits is also affecting the ability of customers to order test kits online. The CVS website, for instance, had only one out of five brands in stock, with a limit of six per order with delivery anticipated between Wednesday and next Monday. But the site also issues a caveat that “due to high demand, deliveries may be delayed.”
All four brands of home tests on the Walgreens website also showed up as out of stock online for shipping to customers. Rite Aid’s website also showed that no tests were available to order online
At the federal level, President Joe Biden announced that the government is ordering 500 million at-home test kits that are expected to be made available to Americans at no charge through a registration website, perhaps as early as January.
In the meantime, Fresno County is working with the state of California to get its hands on tens of thousands of test kits that will be made available free to residents who are considered most vulnerable based on areas with high COVID-19 infection rates and among the more economically and medically disadvantaged ZIP codes across the county.
Joe Prado, assistant director of the Fresno County Department of Public Health, told The Fresno Bee on Monday that the state has allocated 84,000 kits to the county. A tentative delivery could arrive from the state later this week for distribution through community-based organizations that have been crucial to Fresno County’s coronavirus testing and vaccine efforts to get the kits into the hands of eligible residents.
The county is also setting up a website where people can register to have a test kit sent to their home. “By next week we expect those to be coming into play,” Prado said. Those will also be based on eligibility as part of a vulnerable community, and orders will be able to be placed every two weeks.
“Just know that at the first of next week it will be like a bombardment (of information) of how you can get a test kit, and if you’re a vulnerable population you get an extra web link where you can go go sign up,” he added.
The state allocation of test kits is separate from whatever tests are made available from the federal government.
Supply and demand
Prado attributed the current shortage of rapid tests to the ebbs and flows of supply and demand – a repeat of something that occurred earlier this year.
The state had to put a cap on the number of tests that it was sending to school districts to test athletes and other students to clear them for participation in class and in activities because there simply weren’t enough tests in the supply chain.
“The supply just wasn’t there,” Prado said. “School districts were placing their orders, and there just wasn’t enough production by the companies to meet the demand or the need” until they could boost their output.
The lag began as COVID-19 case counts declined over the summer, and fewer people were getting tested. As a result, companies ramped down their production to avoid having a glut of tests that would expire before being used. “Then when the surges started coming up (in the late summer and early fall), companies found themselves in a position to scramble to ramp up their production once again.
Now demand is again outpacing supply as people see the increasing number of cases of two contagious variants of the coronavirus, Prado said. “It’s amazing how we get on reply with this response,” he said.
Health officials advise that if a person has COVID-19 symptoms – including fever, cough, shortness of breath, loss of their sense of taste or smell, fatigue, muscle or body aches, sore throat, nausea or vomiting, or diarrhea – but tests negative on an at-home antigen test kit, they should follow up with a PCR test from their doctor, a county testing site or other testing clinic.
PCR testing sites
Unlike the current shortage of at-home testing kits, there’s no crimp on the availability of testing at sites across the county, Prado told The Bee.
“Last week we saw 33% of the system’s capacity being utilized for PCR testing in Fresno County,” he said. “That means we have close to 70% availability at all of our PCR testing sites.”
A week earlier, only 23% of the available testing capacity was being used, Prado said. “So we did see a 10% increase from one week to the next,” he said. “That’s good. We want people using that asset.”
The UCSF-Fresno COVID-19 Equity Project last week was doing more than 200 tests per day last week before being closed on Friday for the holiday weekend, said Brandy Ramos Nikaido, a spokesperson for the medical program.
On Monday, the first day back after the Christmas weekend, the line for testing at the UCSF site on Shaw Avenue across the street from the Fresno Fashion Fair mall took up the entire driveway in front of the building, not quite backing up into the street. “The line is long right now, but we have a pretty efficient operation and it’s not too long of a wait,” Ramos Nikaido said.
The Fresno County Department of Public Health’s website includes a page that details the various testing sites available for PCR testing throughout the county, including retail pharmacies; state-backed OptumServe testing sites at Fresno City College, the Sanger Community Center, the West Fresno Regional Center and in Selma; mobile testing bus locations in outlying communities; at the UCSF-Fresno center near the Fashion Fair mall; and other programs and clinics.
To learn more about testing in Fresno County, the health department has a toll-free COVID-19 Information Line at 888-559-2683. To find out how and where to get vaccinated, visit the Fresno County Public Health Department website at www.fcdph.org/covid19vax, or the state’s MyTurn online vaccine registration site at myturn.ca.gov or calling 833-422-4255.
This story was originally published December 27, 2021 at 3:54 PM.
