Photo: Manuel Ortiz.
REDWOOD CITY– Despite the rapid rise in new infections from the Omicron variant, particularly during the holiday season, it is reckless that it has become so chaotic and difficult to get a COVID-19 test in San Mateo County.
On Bay Rd, at 2685, in both directions, there is a long line of cars with people waiting to get a COVID-19 test.
It's a cloudy and rainy afternoon. I join one of the two lines. After 20 minutes of immobility, I turn off the car and turn on my Kindle to read while I wait.
I am fully vaccinated against SARS-CoV-2 (COVID-19) and follow health safety guidelines such as wearing a face mask. However, I used to get tested constantly because my job involves contact with a wide variety of people.
I would get these tests done at the North Fair Oaks “wall” on the weekends. It was a quick and easy process: I walked up, no appointment, and was ready to go in less than 20 minutes. San Mateo County was doing it right.
Now, I've been waiting (stopwatch in hand) for an hour and 17 minutes in the long line of cars and I've barely advanced about 50 feet. Fortunately, my Kindle reading is enjoyable and it's my day off, which gives me the patience of a Zen monk.
But I guess the driver in front of me isn't in the same boat. About an hour and 40 minutes into the wait, about 98 feet from the entrance to the parking lot, where there's another line for getting tested, the car starts to swerve to get out of the line, and when it does, it takes off.
Finally, ten minutes before the two-hour wait, I drive my car to 2685 Bay Street. At the entrance to the parking lot, a very kind young woman tells me that, without an appointment, there are no more tests at this time.
Photo: Manuel Ortiz
– Why don’t they announce that without appointments there are no more tests? I ask with the same kindness that she has.
– Yes, sorry, there isn’t enough evidence.
– And can you get there on foot?
She says yes, but obviously, even though we're in North Fair Oaks, it's a difficult place for pedestrians, and it's far from the Latino neighborhoods. I thank her, we smile, and I leave.
Paradoxically, after learning that the omicron variant had entered California through San Francisco and that it was highly contagious, San Mateo County decided to reduce COVID-19 testing sites and make the process as bureaucratic and exclusionary as it was at the beginning of the pandemic, if not more so.
In addition to being confusing and time-consuming, San Mateo County's current COVID-19 testing process in Redwood City excludes the most disadvantaged sectors, including a large part of the Latino community.
What about people – many of them Latinas – who don’t have a car or the technological tools to make appointments online? What about those who can’t afford to wait so many hours because that means stopping work and, therefore, losing the little income they receive?
The pandemic is not over, and while immunization rates are fortunately high in our county – thanks in part to valuable community work – we know that rapid detection of the virus is vitally important to prevent its transmission.
San Mateo County, as we have noted on P360P, has done an exemplary job in terms of the SARS-CoV-2 vaccine. But now, faced with the challenge of the new omicron variant, it is underestimating the risks, acting clumsily, and excluding a portion of our Latino community.
Photo: Manuel Ortiz
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