Since Thanksgiving, Dr. Holly Oh has been tackling a trend at her community health center in Dorchester: So many people are booking pre-travel COVID-19 appointments that it has become nearly impossible for patients with symptoms or who have come in contact with a positive case to schedule a test.
“It’s really quite maddening,” Oh, the medical director at the Dimock Community Health Center, told GBH News. “We've had to sort of juggle around and try to figure out how we're going to book people who actually have symptoms. We look at the schedule, and there’s all these pre-travel and pre-holiday gathering requests.”
Oh says she’s had to do “all sorts of machinations” to give community members needed access to testing, and in an ideal world, testing would be available to anyone, at any time, for any reason.
“I think some of it is also just because we, the big ‘we,’ the state, haven't been able to ramp up the testing accessibility quick enough, fast enough, broadly enough across different communities,” Oh said.
Still, knowing that pre-travel tests are making testing inaccessible for people who are potentially actively spreading the virus is frustrating, Oh says.
“These testing sites are now getting filled up with, you know, hey, I'm going to go visit my grandma, so I'm going to get a test before I go and so forth,” Oh said. “We certainly don't want to deny people tests, because those still hold important spots in controlling the transmission. But right now, it's actually been to the detriment of the community members who actually have symptoms or who have close contacts.”
While some health centers prevent anyone without symptoms or close contact with a positive case from getting a test, Oh says Dimock is one of several community health facilities that wanted to take a more open approach, making testing as available as possible.
“We've made it so easy to access our health center that it sometimes leaves the folks who actually have symptoms living in tight quarters in Roxbury, and it's actually making it more difficult for them,” Oh said. “It's hard to get them a spot because it's been filled up by folks who are traveling.”
Dimock mainly serves the communities of Roxbury, Dorchester, Mattapan, Jamaica Plain and Hyde Park. The facility also contains a residential shelter and on-site substance use resources. Oh says it’s important to keep the door open to those communities for testing — but that shouldn’t include travelers from outside the area looking to get a pre-holiday test to meet a state travel order restriction.
“We need that access in other communities within the commonwealth, too, so that, you know, folks from Wellesley, if they’re going to plan a ski trip to Vermont, can get their test in Wellesley — they don’t have to travel all the way to Roxbury, to my health center, to get it,” Oh said. “Everyone really should be able to access testing easily in their own community.”
Massachusetts will receive $452.1 million to expand COVID-19 testing, tracing and mitigation as part of the state’s $9 billion federal stimulus share.
Though the Health and Human Services Department has not officially announced how the millions will be specifically allocated, Gov. Charlie Baker has announced new infrastructure for testing across the state.
“As we enter the winter months, testing will be a crucial measure to prevent COVID,” Baker said at a news conference earlier this month. “But folks need to keep in mind that testing only represents a moment in time, and there are several other prevention measures that we must all practice every day.”
Testing sites will be expanded into New Bedford, Framingham and Lynn, with new sites that will test at least 1,000 individuals per day, according to Baker’s office.
The state also plans to use $550,000 in state funds to open testing sites across Western Mass and the Cape and Islands, in addition to expanding free testing with a mobile provider in Franklin County.
Massachusetts has so far allocated more than $150 million for free COVID-19 testing, including surveillance testing programs and investments in laboratory capacity to process samples. Approximately 91,400 individuals are tested weekly at 50 Stop the Spread sites across the state.
“Massachusetts has some of the best testing in the country,” Oh said. “We're one of the better ones, but it's still too difficult. If we’re setting up these testing sites so quickly and making the barrier so low for residents of Roxbury and Dorchester and so forth, and now they're getting crowded out, like, what solutions do we have here?”
Oh says the answer is to expand testing — but that process requires so much more than just money. “It's hard to expand testing on a dime,” Oh said. “Its staffing. Its resources. It's, you know, people sometimes may not realize it's not just the sticking the swab up the nose. While the funds are still needed, there are still so many pieces to do to expand it, and it’s not going to be an overnight thing.”
