These Dallas-Fort Worth residents had coronavirus symptoms, but couldn’t get tested
As the number of confirmed cases of COVID-19 grow and Texas sees its first reports of community spread, state and local officials have touted their increased testing capabilities, promising more to come. But for some DFW residents who had fevers and saw flu tests come back negative, their symptoms were not enough for them to get tested for the novel coronavirus in the last few weeks.
Heather, who works in outside sales in Fort Worth and asked her last name not be used to protect her privacy, said she started to feel sick after attending a trade show in Dallas in mid-January that drew attendees from across the country and abroad.
She went to her primary care doctor a week later, and a flu test came back negative. Common cold medicine didn’t help, and neither did the antibiotics she was prescribed over a week after that, Heather said.
By late February, with her symptoms getting worse, and knowing she came into contact with attendees from across the globe, Heather wanted to be tested for COVID-19. Her doctor said they were unable to test, and she was referred to emergency rooms and urgent care centers. But after calling about eight locations, they were only offering to retest her for the flu to start, and an ER visit would be both expensive and take up precious resources.
So she waited for hours to get answers from the CDC and Texas Department of State Health Services’ hotlines — and still hasn’t been administered a test, despite her continued fever, she said.
“With the information that’s out there about how widely the other countries, such as Australia and South Korea, are testing their citizens, I would expect that the United States would be far ahead and it has left me very uneasy,” Heather said.
Coronavirus testing capability
State and local officials, as of Friday, slowly began revealing specific numbers about coronavirus testing in the state, and Tarrant County’s testing capabilities are lower than originally anticipated.
During a press conference Friday afternoon, Gov. Greg Abbott said 220 Texans had been tested for coronavirus by the CDC and in state public health labs, with 75 tests being processed. He said the Department of State Health Services, which operates 10 public health labs throughout the state, including one in Tarrant County, can now test about 270 people per day. Increased testing is expected outside of public health lab options in the coming weeks as more private and hospital-based labs come online, and with the announcement of the state’s first drive-through testing sites.
The Tarrant County Public Health lab was capable of testing 24 people per day, Tarrant County Public Health director Vinny Taneja said Friday, but he would not say how many tests the lab had done. The lab serves at least 30 mostly rural counties, so Taneja said a figure about local testing “is usually not useful” and would not indicate exposure in Tarrant County.
In a press release last week, Taneja said he expected the lab to be capable of completing 50 to 100 tests per day by the end of this week. He said Friday the lab was still working to get up to that capacity and technicians were training to use new technology the lab received this week.
Demand for tests was steadily increasing, he said, but he did not quantify that assertion. On Thursday, Judge Glen Whitley said in an interview that the county is “not experiencing any difficulties with that.”
“People who need to know are in the know,” Taneja said when pressed for more details about Tarrant County cases.
Meanwhile, Dallas County’s lab has tested 59 people for coronavirus. It can test 42 people a day and expects that number to increase to 180 by the end of next week, according to the Dallas Morning News.
Abbott declined to specify how many testing kits Texas has available, saying at a Friday press conference it’s “a lot and growing exponentially.”
The confusion about testing and the lack of clarity about their availability contradicted claims from President Donald Trump earlier this month. At a briefing March 6 at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta, he said tests would be widely available.
“Anybody that wants a test can get a test. That’s what the bottom line is,” Trump told reporters.
Rep. Chris Turner, a Democrat from Grand Prairie and chair of the House Democratic Caucus, said that while he was glad to see testing capacity increase, “it’s no secret that there’s not near enough testing capacity in Texas — or anywhere else in the United States — and that the federal government is woefully behind.”
As of Friday, at least 50 cases of coronavirus had been confirmed in Texas, with 11 from repatriated patients at Lackland Air Force Base. Three cases had been confirmed in Tarrant County and more than a dozen in the DFW area. DFW’s first possible instance of community spread — when people are not sure how or where they became infected — was announced Thursday night by Dallas County health officials. In the Houston area, a man who attended the Houston Rodeo was identified as a possible case of community spread Wednesday.
Testing options
Texans can receive testing through hospitals and private labs, including Quest Diagnostics and LabCorp, or from state public health labs. Private lab testing is expected to be capable of producing thousands of tests as early as next week, but a test may come with higher fees than public health testing, especially for the uninsured. To get a test from one of the 10 public health labs, a person must see a doctor, who would then contact a public health center to see if testing is recommended.
John Hellerstedt, commissioner of the Texas Department of State Health Services, said Friday that people hospitalized with fever and respiratory illness symptoms with no knowledge of direct contact to the virus would meet criteria for testing. Before, clinicians were instructed by the CDC to “use their judgment” and people often had to exhibit symptoms and have had close contact to a confirmed case or traveled to an area with high rates of coronavirus.
For days, Abbott and public health officials had been unclear about testing capabilities and how many Texans had been tested. Rep. Erin Zwiener, a Democrat from Driftwood who was on a call with Abbott and other lawmakers on Thursday, said on Twitter that “basically they are not testing for community spread right now.”
Anthony Nagle, an investment adviser who lives in Grand Prairie, had recently traveled domestically for work. Last Wednesday, he started to experience mild symptoms, including a fever.
Nagle said he called two hospitals, and the city of Arlington and Dallas County’s health departments. But without recently traveling abroad or interacting with someone known to have a positive case, he said he didn’t meet the testing criteria.
“Once I was turned down by them, I pretty much knew that testing wasn’t an option,” Nagle said.
He checked himself into a hotel to make sure his two young children wouldn’t be affected. And by last Friday, he was able to get tested for the flu at his primary care doctor’s office. The test came back negative.
“At this point my fever went away,” Nagle said Thursday. “It’s very probable it was something minor, but we can’t say what it was.”
A 64-year-old man with a compromised immune system from HIV said he did not qualify for a test earlier this week at a Fort Worth hospital.
The man, who requested his name not be used out of concern for his work, came down with a high fever Tuesday after a domestic flight home. He had a dry cough and chest pains, so his doctor advised him to go to the emergency room.
Medical staff in “full body” gear, including oxygen masks, greeted him at the door, he said, and took him to a separate room that he described as “airtight.” But after a few tests determined he didn’t have the common flu, he said, he was released. He said hospital staff told him he wasn’t a high enough priority to warrant a COVID-19 test because he had not been to a high-risk area and his symptoms were not intense enough. The hospital had a limited number of test kits, he said.
“It’s truly a battle over the number of tests available. They don’t want to use them up,” he said. “Some people may think they just have a cold will go on their merry way and not self contain and spread the virus.”
For Heather, who still had a fever of 101 degrees Friday, she’s been unable to go into work. And all the conflicting information has left her anxious.
“Ideally, I would like to be able to be tested as soon as possible, but if my doctor is unable to allow for that, then I do plan to just wait until otherwise,” Heather said. “Although my symptoms appear to be mild so far, I’m scared to visit family.”
This story was originally published March 13, 2020 at 7:06 PM.
