Tarrant County plans to increase number of open COVID testing sites to meet demand
Tarrant County plans to increase the number of open COVID-19 testing sites following a spike in demand after the holidays, officials said Monday.
County offices, including Public Health clinics, were closed Friday and Monday, but the county’s three vendor locations for COVID testing were each open one day throughout the weekend since the Public Health Department anticipated people gathering and wanting to be tested.
“It’s come to fruition,” Public Health Director Vinny Taneja said. “Everybody’s running around trying to get a test. My phone’s been ringing off the hook because people are calling, ‘Hey, where can I go? Where can I go?’”
On Monday, a county test site was open at Ben Thanh Plaza in Arlington and had no line, County Administrator GK Maenius said, and a location open Sunday at Tarrant County Resource Connection on Fort Worth’s Circle Drive did 161 tests and also never built up a line.
Officials have been monitoring case counts every day, Maenius said, though the county’s database that tracks COVID cases won’t be updated again until Tuesday. He said there haven’t been any complaints about a need for services public health wise.
“Generally, if people wanted to test they can get a test,” Maenius said.
The county dialed back on testing site days in October as the request for testing went down and had each of its three vendor testing locations in Hurst, Fort Worth and Arlington open one day each week, Taneja said. The five Public Health locations have been open almost every day and will be open again starting 8 a.m. Tuesday, he said on Monday.
Taneja said there was plenty of testing availability in Tarrant. The county plans to bump up the number of open testing sites and hopes to have all three vendor locations open throughout the week by Wednesday.
“We were waiting to see what happened in the weekend,” Taneja said. “And obviously, the writing’s on the wall. There’s demand.”
Tarrant County keeps a map on its website of testing locations and times with links to make appointments, if needed. Users can track county testing locations as well as ones at local pharmacies, and can determine where they can drive through and walk-in to be tested.
County offices are closed again Friday for the New Year, and Taneja said Monday he didn’t know how it would impact testing availability over the weekend. He said it would come down to demand and that he intended to keep the vendor sites open like they were over Christmas weekend. A decision will be made by the middle of this week, Taneja said.
This story was originally published December 27, 2021 at 4:17 PM.
