Demand for COVID testing soars in Fresno County as more vaccine mandates take hold
A growing number of government agencies and other employers are establishing policies for their employees to prove their coronavirus vaccination status or submit to frequent testing and show negative results for the virus.
Those requirements — along with a rapidly rising number of new COVID-19 cases and growing concern over the highly contagious delta variant of the virus in Fresno County and throughout California — are driving an increase in demand for testing.
Over the past five weeks, the average number of nasal swabs collected by testing sites in Fresno County has climbed from fewer than 2,000 a day to more than 3,500 a day as recently as last week. That’s an increase of almost 79% – enough to prompt county health leaders to ask the California Department of Public Health to double the testing capacity at its OptumServe sites across Fresno County.
“I think that our testing capacity will need to increase because more and more testing mandates are coming out linked to vaccine mandates in some way,” said Dr. Rais Vohra, Fresno County’s interim health officer. “Usually the flavor of the requirement is that if you’re not vaccinated, you will need to get regular testing – meaning weekly testing.”
On Aug. 4, Fresno Mayor Jerry Dyer announced a vaccination policy requiring that employees of the city be vaccinated or have weekly testing. Last week, Gov. Gavin Newsom issued a mandate for teachers to get vaccinated or be tested weekly, following the lead of several local school systems in Oakland, San Jose and Long Beach.
The Newsom administration recently announced a recommendation – but not a mandate – that private employers across California require their workers to be vaccinated or tested regularly for the virus.
Vohra last week urged the Fresno County Board of Supervisors to take action similar to that previously taken by Dyer and the city of Fresno as well as local hospitals – requiring county employees to provide proof of vaccination or have weekly tests, along with compelling face masks for every employee.
“This is really the best scenario or best strategy of how to keep people as safe as possible,” Vohra told board members at their Aug. 10 meeting. “I would humbly submit these are cost effective and not invasive procedures to keep everyone safer.”
But Vohra’s request received a tepid response from the elected officials.
How fast is demand growing?
Joe Prado, assistant director of the Fresno County Department of Public Health, said that as recently as two weeks ago, most of the OptumServe sites were seeing only about half the number of people that they are intended to serve. On Tuesday, Prado said the most recent information from the state showed that the sites are now running at 135% of capacity overall.
“We have requested to the state to double the capacity” at the sites, Prado said. “With previous requests the state has approved and implemented after a week. We will see how quickly the state approves and implements” the county’s newest request to boost the number of nasal swabs that can be collected by the sites for testing.
In December, near the peak a fierce winter spike in COVID-19 cases, hospitalizations and fatalities, the daily average of test samples taken in Fresno County exceeded 6,800 per day. The largest single-day total was almost 9,800 swabs on Dec. 8.
While vaccines are widely available in Fresno County, just under half of the county’s 1 million residents remain unvaccinated, and a growing number may be confronted by a requirement for frequent testing.
“We know that health care workers will be undergoing that process, and other companies and organizations and even some cities like the city of Fresno are kind of embracing that paradigm,” Vohra said. “I think it’s really smart to do and I think it really will help curb the number of outbreaks that we see across these different organizations.”
“What that will mean is we do have more people in the system who will need a weekly test,” Vohra added. “The bottom line is we need to be aware that the capacity limits may be something that limits where people can go get a test.
Who’s going to pay for it?
As more workers flock to testing sites, some wonder about who’s supposed to pick up the cost.
The Fresno County Department of Public Health, on its COVID-19 testing web page, tells visitors that “there are no out-of-pocket costs for medically-necessary testing” through its partner testing sites.
But does “medically necessary” include testing for workers who are required by their employers to get tested if they’re not vaccinated? That’s not entirely clear.
“Pretty much at our OptumServe sites, they collect medical information and so they’re able to bill insurances for that,” Prado said. “There’s a lot of allowances under insurance reimbursement to be able to pay for this testing. But all of our state sites … there will pretty much not be a bill sent to the patient” from the county and state partners OptumServe and Verily, another testing organization.
People who visit their doctor or another source for a coronavirus test may run into different situations. “If you go to your medical provider, that’s a conversation for you to have with your medical provider and your insurance company,” Prado said.
A list of coronavirus testing sites in Fresno County is available on the county health department’s website at www.co.fresno.ca.us/departments/public-health/covid-19/covid-19-testing-sites. Those include OptumServe sites at:
- Fresno City College.
- Sanger Community Center.
- West Fresno Regional Center.
- Selma Pioneer Village.
- John Palacios Community Center in Huron.
- Wellborn Center in Coalinga.
- Downtown Parking in Coalinga.
Earlier this year, the Peterson Center on Healthcare and the Kaiser Family Foundation reported that at hospitals across the U.S., the cost of a COVID-19 diagnostic test ranged from a low of $20 to as high as $1,428 for a single test, with the median at about $148.
Jose Sosa of Clovis said his grandson, who attends Reedley College, was able to be tested throughout the 2020-21 school year at the college at no charge at an OptumServe site. But that site has been deactivated, and as his grandson sought a fresh COVID-19 test for the new school year, several sites including a local urgent-care center quoted out-of-pocket costs between $150 and $200, Sosa said.
“I think this is ridiculous,” Sosa said. “No wonder people can’t get any test because they’re so expensive and a lot of people cannot afford it.”
This story was originally published August 18, 2021 at 5:00 AM with the headline "Demand for COVID testing soars in Fresno County as more vaccine mandates take hold."
