Austin (KXAN) — As the month comes to a close, Austin health leaders are preparing to roll out the next phase of a long-term plan to significantly ramp up COVID-19 testing in the area.
According to Texas Department of State Health Services data, from the start of the pandemic through May 26, a total of 31,470 people in Travis County have been tested for COVID-19. The number included anyone in the county who was given a COVID-19 test, regardless of whether they received the test from a doctor in private practice or at a free public testing site.
For the entire month of June, Austin Public Health is planning to administer 40,000 COVID-19 tests in Austin and Travis County — more than doubling the total number of COVID-19 tests administered for Austin-Travis County.
Austin Public Health plans to boost testing even more by administering 60,000 COVID-19 tests during the month of July. For August, September, October, November, and December, APH plans to maintain that level of administering 60,000 tests per month.
“Again it is a lofty goal, its something we do in partnership with the community,” said Janet Pichette, the chief epidemiologist for Austin Public Health.
Why ramp up testing to this level?
As the state continues to reopen and the availability of testing increases, APH predicts an increase in the number of people looking for testing which may result in an increase of positive cases.
The benchmarks for scaling up testing were laid out by the department in a memo submitted to city leaders. The department made a plan for COVID-19 testing for the rest of 2020 and submitted that to the federal government. Austin Public Health said the city is eligible for reimbursement for things like COVID-19 testing and contact tracing, but “it is not quite clear” how that reimbursement will work.
The plan
For the month of May, the department launched into the first phase of its plan, aiming for Austin-Travis County to carry out a total of 10,000 COVID-19 tests. It’s a goal the department seems to have exceeded with 19,139 tests in Travis County being reported to the state so far during the month of May.
The department also aimed to provide 2,000 tests per week in May, a goal which they mostly exceeded each week.
The next phase of this plan starts in June with a goal of having 5,000 tests administered each week.
A third phase can also be rolled out if the COVID-19 positivity rate reaches 5% of tests in any given week. Austin Public Health said the objective is to be able to ramp testing up and down with these phases depending on how the virus plays out.
Austin’s Interim Health Authority Dr. Mark Escott said that all of the tests included as part of this ramp-up are PCR tests which he called “the gold standard” for testing right now. Austin Public Health is not using antibody testing, Escott said.
Pieces in place to make a testing ramp-up happen
Austin health leaders noted at a press conference Wednesday that they have some help in achieving these ambitious testing goals. Outside of the Austin Public Health free testing site, local hospital systems will continue offering this testing, as will clinics such as CommUnity Care and retail pharmacies like CVS which are starting to offer the test.
“Our hope is — and certainly the information that we are receiving from the labs and the state and the federal government is — that the testing situation will continue to improve, the availability of test collection kits to run the test will become more available,” Escott said.
He explained the department is still working to find a way to bring the data from all those different places together so that the region has a better idea of the testing being done.
At least at Austin Public Health’s testing site, the department has the capability to test far more people than are actually showing up each day. The department said it is able to offer 1,750 tests per day, but that most days around 200 people show up. APH said it is trying to use media campaigns to get the word out that testing at this site is free and that people don’t need a doctor referral to take the online screening to be tested.
Escott said he doesn’t expect the department will open up testing regionally so that anyone who simply wants a test can get tested whether or not they are showing symptoms. Currently, Austin is not “maximizing the capacity” with the testing sites it already has and “the bar is pretty low” to get testing, Escott noted.
“The risk that we have with lowering the bar, you see some communities who are testing everybody that comes, there’s a bit of a diminishing return,” he said. “The tests are utilizing taxpayer dollars, and if the return on that investment is very, very small, those resources might be better utilized to care for people or utilized for different public measures. We don’t want to have a zero percent positive testing rate, but we do want to make sure we are testing enough.”
APH acknowledged that being able to increase testing this dramatically will depend on tests actually being available to use. Additionally, the testing ramp-up will also depend on having enough equipment and staff to safely offer those tests.
Austin Public Health estimates that they will need 100 to 150 people to staff testing sites each day for the months to come as well as between 80 and 115 people tasked with carrying out COVID-19 investigations and contact tracing per day.
Escott said the department is trying to reach out to underserved communities in Austin as well as to Latinx and African American communities to get the word out about testing.
“We are examining different strategies for testing folks that may not be able to make it through a drive-thru testing site,” he said.
Equity in the response to COVID-19 has continued to be a concern of many Austin community groups. Last week, Austin’s City Council approved the creation of a Hispanic Outreach task force which aims to address the disparate impact observed so far of COVID-19 on Austin’s Hispanic community.
NPR released a report Wednesday which indicated that in four out of six of Texas’ largest cities, COVID-19 testing sites are disproportionately located in whiter neighborhoods. Austin was among those four cities, with 16 testing sites in Census tracts that NPR’s research found to be “whiter than the city median” and 9 testing sites in Census tracts that are “less white than the city median.”
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