SPOKANE, Wash. — With Spokane County having broke its single-day case record multiple times in the past weeks as the highly contagious omicron variant becoming the dominant strain of coronavirus, some people are struggling to find available COVID-19 test appointments.
The line at the Spokane Falls Community College testing site started to wrap around itself at times on Monday. One man in line told KREM he easily found an appointment Monday, while others in line had a harder time.
"It was pretty difficult actually. I looked online, they didn't have anything publicly available until Friday, and obviously that's not going to work, you know, it needs to be immediate," said Jordan Burns, who was in line for a test.
According to the booking website, as of Monday morning, the Spokane Falls free testing location was fully booked until Thursday. The sister location at the Spokane County Expo Center had some appointments open with short notice on Monday afternoon, but after that, the soonest available appointment was not until Thursday.
Those in line at the SFCC site felt the frustrations of finding a test.
"Pretty difficult in our area. We're out from Loon Lake and everybody's out of tests or its an all day wait, so I had to come out to the college," said Brian Roberts, another person in line at SFCC.
The free public testing sites aren't the only ones booked up. At 10:30 a.m. on Monday, all Walgreens locations in Spokane except for one were out of drive-through tests. At Rite-Aid, it was a similar story, with the next available appointment being offered at 10 a.m. on Jan. 24.
Even those willing to pay for a COVID-19 test through an appointment with their medical provider have found the process to be far from simple.
"I called the doctor's office they're two weeks out. Urgent care is a few days out. Then I even tried calling Rite-Aid and no body has anything," said another woman in line at SFCC.
According to the Spokane Regional Health District, the problem comes down to supply. SRHD Spokesperson Kelli Hawkins said the problem is caused by testing supplies not keeping up with increasing testing demands - a problem that has persisted for at least a couple weeks.
The health district hopes that the federal program offering at-home tests starting this Wednesday will partially help with the problem. The program allows people to order up to four at-home testing kits per household through the website COVIDtests.gov.
Hawkins also said the health district is waiting to hear back on efforts being made to create more testing availability in the area. One effort is being led by Discovery Health, the medical company running the SFCC and Spokane County Expo Center testing sites along with the Washington Department of Health. Hawkins said Discovery Health is trying to hire more staff for the testing sites in order to expand operating hours.