Tarrant County expands dates, times of free COVID testing sites as positivity rate soars
Starting Wednesday, Tarrant County will expand its availability for free COVID-19 testing at its vendor locations as residents’ demand for testing soars following the holidays.
This week, the testing site at Ben Thanh Market, 1818 E. Pioneer Parkway Ste. 100 in Arlington, will be open daily through Friday from 9 a.m. to 7 p.m. Northeast Annex at 837 Brown Trail in Bedford and Resource Connection in Parking Lot D at 1500 Circle Drive in Fort Worth will be open from 9 a.m. to 7 p.m. Wednesday through Friday. All three locations will expand weekend availability and open from 7 a.m. to 5 p.m. Saturdays and Sundays, according to a news release from the county health department, but will be closed this Saturday for the New Year’s holiday.
All three of those vendor sites, which are operated by contractors for the county, will be open seven days a week following the New Year.
The county’s five Public Health clinic testing sites will still be open weekly Monday through Friday from 8 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. Those sites might be closed for the county New Year’s holiday on Friday. A determination on whether they’ll be open over the holidays will be made later this week, Public Health Director Vinny Taneja said on Tuesday.
The clinic sites are located at Arlington Adult Health Services, 2596 E. Arkansas Lane in Arlington; Bagsby-Williams Public Health Clinic, 3212 Miller Ave. in Fort Worth; Northwest Public Health Center, 3800 Adam Grubb Road in Lake Worth; Southwest Public Health Clinic, 6551 Granbury Road in Fort Worth; and Watauga Public Health Center, 6601 Watauga Road in Watauga.
Ben Thanh Plaza was the only county location open this past Monday for COVID-19 testing. Taneja told reporters Tuesday following the county commissioners meeting that the site collected 500 samples.
As of Tuesday morning, the county’s level of community spread, which is determined by the number of new cases per 100,000 residents and percentage of positive tests over the course of a week, jumped back up to “high” — the highest level of classification — after being back and forth between “substantial” since November.
Test positivity as of Saturday skyrocketed to 18.3%. In total, Tarrant has recorded 381,274 cases since the start of the pandemic.
Taneja told reporters that as Tarrant residents have gone in droves to go get tested, some test locations have seen positivity rates higher than 20%.
Ahead of the anticipated surge, Taneja said his office kept the three vendor sites open and received updates on staffing and traffic to prepare for what could come.
Taneja said there could be lines at some locations, and that even though test registration isn’t a requirement, making an appointment in advance would give the workers at the site an idea of how many people are coming so they can have resources prepared to handle the surge.
Overbooking hasn’t been a problem at the Tarrant testing locations and staff have been able to handle increased demand, Taneja told the Star-Telegram. But at partner testing locations like Tarrant County College, some residents have reported issues with being able to get a test due to overbooking. As of Tuesday, some TCC locations had time slots that were 88 and 91 people deep as the number of people registering exceeded availability.
At the TCC Northeast Campus in Hurst, people in line without appointments were not being turned away Tuesday morning. Staff members told those who hadn’t already registered to log in on site on their phones. But some residents with appointments Monday afternoon reported being turned away and asked to return Tuesday as the line grew.
At the South Campus on Tuesday afternoon, a line of cars practically sat still on Dub Shaw Drive, and another line took up a whole lane of traffic on Joe D. Rushing Road as cars crept toward a tan testing trailer in a nearby parking lot. The testing line at the Trinity River Campus started in the turn lane from West Belknap Street onto North Henderson Street.
The website where residents can make appointments showed some TCC sites were overbooked by between 56 and 284 slots on Monday afternoon.
Officials at Gene IQ, which runs the testing sites at TCC campuses, could not be reached for comment.
Taneja said despite overbooking, these sites weren’t “stopping people” from getting tested, and that the volume serves as an indicator that officials need to increase testing capacity.
This story was originally published December 28, 2021 at 1:05 PM.
