With cases surging across New York state, people are scrambling to find at-home COVID-19 testing kits, but information from local government officials is scarce and incomplete.
COVID-19 infections remain at record levels in New York state, according to Governor Kathy Hochul. The Democrat announced Friday that new mass testing sites will open in six cities next week including Albany, Mount Vernon and Syracuse.
To stem the spread of the virus, people are looking for at-home test kits that provide instant results, rather than the usual 48-hour waiting period at testing sites. Pharmacist Neal Smoller is with Village Apothecary in Woodstock.
"We have demand that I've literally never seen in my life," he said. "Where, if we could, if we had the capacity, sell thousands of tests a day and I've never sold thousands of anything in a day, besides COVID shots for free. But, the amount of folks looking for at-home tests is astronomical.”
Smoller says, like other pharmacists, he can’t get a steady supply.
"What ends up happening is they announce, ‘Hey, we have tests,’ and then everybody kind of flash mobs them, buys out everything they have, and then they're out. And then we have to wait for another vendor to come online and become available. So, there's a lot of that going on.”
While President Joe Biden announced the government will provide 500 million free rapid home-testing kits, states will not likely receive the tests until after the new year, which leaves smaller governments scrambling to provide what they can.
In the Capital Region, local officials surveyed by WAMC had few details on where residents can currently find at-home testing kits – besides hunting for them in pharmacies.
Schenectady County and city officials say, so far, they have not received any at-home tests to distribute. Likewise for Albany County. When the tests come from the federal government, a spokeswoman says they will be distributed through the Sheriff Department’s Emergency Management Office.
Albany Mayor Kathy Sheehan’s office recently tapped 15 local organizations to hand out about 2,600 test kits. The Black Nurses Coalition received 270 kits, but CEO and Founder Brenda Robinson says her community is more reluctant to get tested.
"What people don't realize is that a lot of folks in underserved communities, especially our minority communities, they don’t understand, for one, what the directions of the kit are, how to use the kit, or some folks can't even understand how to read the pamphlet that comes along with it," she said. "And also, it takes encouragement and reassurance for people to actually want to test. So, just like with the vaccine is a lot of work to get people to actually test."
Doing door-to-door testing Wednesday night, Robinson said they had seven positive cases in the University at Albany’s Livingston Tower.
"Every place we went, we've got positives. And these are people that lived in Livingston school apartments (that have) about 130 people in one high rise," Robinson said. "So, you want to know who's positive who's not. We had one person was a bus driver. He was due to back to work on (January) 3rd. Now he's not going back to work because he found that he was positive. And he wasn't even going to get tested. He was walking by and I said, ‘Hold on, hold on, you need to get tested.’”
WAMC reached out to the Rensselaer County executive’s office and county Public Health Department, but calls went unanswered and the voicemail for both offices were full, which meant no messages could be left.
Mike Stammel, the mayor of Rensselaer, says there are no at-home tests available at City Hall.
"As far as I know - And I'm the chairman of the county legislature and I was up there the other day looking for kits - we do not have any kits at Rensselaer County," Stammel said.
Stammel added the county is unable to purchase test kits itself, since it does not have the funding allotted:
"It’s not anything that you have budgeted for. I'd like to see the federal government, state government say, ‘Hey, you know, go spend this amount of money which you think you need for kits.’”
Some local officials, like Saratoga Springs Supervisor Tara Gaston say they are frustrated by the lack of consistency in the availability of test kits.
"So, Saratoga County has not received any of the home test kits. We've been told that we're going to receive them, but if we do, it will be early 2022. Which is a little frustrating because I know that they've been delivered elsewhere. But, that's where we stand on that right now."
On county and city websites in the Capital Region, information on where to find testing sites is common, but details on at-home testing kits is limited, if available at all. Gaston says finding out about kit availability comes down to word-of-mouth and on social media. Saratoga Springs is currently distributing K95 masks.
“I just spent two hours in the outside of the library and a lot of people came by to pick them up. The library shared my (Facebook) post about that. But, it's kind of word of mouth," she said. "There's also some available at City Hall, the Rec Center, the visitor center and the library for people to walk in and pick up.”
Cohoes is using similar tactics. Unlike Rensselaer and Schenectady, the city this week received 540 at-home tests from Albany County. Mayor Bill Keeler says they advertised the availability on social media.
"We did not want to do a big press release, because of the limited number and the response was actually perfect. Most of them went the first day. There were a few test kits left over that were distributed yesterday," Keeler said. "And I literally had one left in the office today and somebody just called for it. So, they're on their way down here. So, we gave out everything that we had. And we expect in a not too distant future to get some more from the county."
Keeler says most people who showed up were just grateful to find the tests.
"To have them available because they the kits just aren't available at retail and at the on-site testing sites," Keeler said. "Every day, it's just like you see on the news everywhere else, there's just lines of cars that extend for, you know, a half a mile that are like hours long. So, you know, for the folks they have the opportunity to come pick up the free at home test kits, they're grateful."
On a virtual press conference with other Republicans Thursday, Congressman Lee Zeldin criticized the state’s response to the pandemic and limited testing sites and at-home kits. The presumptive gubernatorial nominee says testing sites should have consistent hours and more should be open.
"I referenced that Central New York example, where the test site is open for four days a week for six hours a day. Three of those days are (open) during prime business hours. We just need more hours available," the Republican said.
Zeldin criticized the move by the Biden administration to divert more than $2 billion meant for other health initiatives toward covering the cost of caring for unaccompanied immigrant children, including $850 million that Congress originally allocated to rebuild the nation’s Strategic National Stockpile, the emergency medical reserve that has been strained by the Covid-19 response, including testing.
Zeldin was asked what he would be doing differently from Hochul if governor.
"What as I referenced earlier in my remarks, the state has been talking about how it has a multi-billion dollar budget surplus. And I also referenced the multi-billion dollar fund that was created earlier this year, for it was called the ‘Excluded Workers Fund for people who aren't legally in the country. Now, I'm pointing to these examples as places where the funding can be pulled from," he said. "If the state has a multi-billion dollar budget surplus, then it has the funds available there to be able to pay for access to tests."
Pharmacist Smoller says test scarcity will likely continue until the federal government starts delivering them to the states.
"We're in so many communities every day. Just to see the disjointed nature and how the municipalities themselves are struggling to, you know, have some sort of easy access to testing and nobody can solve this problem. So, this is a very universal problem that everybody's facing and it's just really unfortunate."
His advice for those seeking an at-home test?
"I guess my advice is good luck, I think, or go fish."
