Overrun by demand, Palm Beach drive-thru testing site is running out of supplies
Two days after announcing that it was conducting free drive-thru testing for the disease caused by the novel coronavirus, a nonprofit in West Palm Beach had to halt new visits after being overrun and quickly running short of testing supplies.
The surge in traffic to FoundCare, a federally qualified healthcare center, came despite limitations on who could show up for testing, which included a scheduled appointment and screening questions about health risk factors and travel history. It overwhelmed the small nonprofit not because the center did not have the staffing, but because it did not have enough personal protective equipment or the swab kits used to collect specimens.
Yolette Bonnet, the CEO of FoundCare, told the Herald the testing site began operations Monday and saw more than 60 people, but she quickly realized she had to halt new appointments as supplies ran low and there appeared to be no help on the way to replenish them.
When she notified state and local health officials of the supply shortage, Bonnet said they sent her a link to purchase more.
“We’ve been doing this for free because we’re a nonprofit,” Bonnet said. “We don’t charge anything at all.”
FoundCare’s initial supply was already limited, constrained to some kept in-house and the rest obtained by “begging and pleading” from local providers who decided not to do testing at their own facilities, Bonnet said.
Given the nonprofit’s financial constraints, Bonnet said she wasn’t sure where to go for help obtaining supplies.
“Where do we go from here?” Bonnet said. “We had over 6,000 phone calls yesterday. We had to put a disclaimer: Please don’t call, don’t leave a message.”
FoundCare has testing appointments scheduled through the end of April, but has to call back those people and cancel them if it does not find a new source of supplies, Bonnet said. For now, the agency is testing people with prior appointments until it runs out of supplies, which could happen soon.
Testing for COVID-19, the disease caused by the novel coronavirus, has been limited throughout the U.S. In Florida, that testing has begun to expand this week, though results are coming in on a delay due to a lack of widespread in-house testing by testing facilities.
For the 60 or so people tested by FoundCare so far, Bonnet said she expected the results to come back toward the end of the week.
Patricia Compton, 62, said she had been sick for a week with a cough when her neighbor told her about the drive-thru testing site. She had decided against going to already-overwhelmed emergency rooms, but called the nonprofit on Sunday evening. She was tested Tuesday afternoon, and said there was no line.
Compton said she is fit and healthy, and hasn’t felt overly sick, but is concerned for her 89-year-old mother and 92-year-old father, whom she helps care for. She expressed frustration that people who aren’t taking the illness seriously are acting selfishly.
“Look in the mirror, it could be you,” Compton said. “Everybody thinks it’s going to be someone else.”
Though protective gear and swabbing kits are in short supply, one thing isn’t: people volunteering to do the tests, Bonnet, the FoundCare CEO, said.
“If we had the tools, we could open our complex on a Saturday and really test a good amount of people,” she said.
This story was updated after it was originally published online to reflect that tests were still being performed and supplies were running out but were not yet entirely gone.
This story was originally published March 17, 2020 at 12:08 PM.
