Long lines, Tarrant County chaos have residents hunting COVID tests as cases surge
Now we know how Tarrant County responds to holiday weekend emergencies.
By taking four days off.
With omicron bearing down like a Texas wildfire, Tarrant County leaders took an extra-long Christmas weekend and left us nothing but a nearly unreadable website list of where and how to get a COVID-19 test.
By the time they got back to their desks, the number of hospitalized COVID-19 patients had tripled. Once-empty testing sites had lines 8 hours long.
Look, I know county workers need a holiday break.
But on a freak-out weekend when 10,000 residents suddenly came down sick, somebody from Fort Worth or Tarrant County needed to tell us exactly what was happening and where to get tested.
Instead, the county health department left for the holidays Dec. 23 with this cheery sendoff on social media: “Merry Christ-mask.” A cartoon Santa offered “Santa-tizer.”
Then they were out of touch for days, leaving residents scrambling for tests and pounding their phones to get results from a website that only works well on a desktop or laptop computer.
Not until Wednesday did Tarrant County announce: “Looking for Free COVID testing? ... Line is short and walk-ins are welcome” at the 1500 Circle Drive location.
(By the way, that site is open all New Year’s weekend, along with 828 W. Harwood Road in Hurst.)
Beneatha Sullivan, a Fort Worth grandmother, was among residents who got fed up.
She wanted to feel safe around her family. So she waited 8 hours — overnight — in line at a retail chain pharmacy for a test.
She finally gave up, left and drove to a college campus site also not operated by Tarrant County.
That line was only 15 cars deep.
But then she realized it wasn’t moving.
“The people doing the testing had quit and left,” she said.
“They drove off in their car and left us in line.”
She wasn’t alone.
The frantic search for a test had already left many residents searching the Tarrant County website.
On the Health Department page last weekend, they learned mainly that it was the holidays, so employees weren’t working.
Only the most stubborn users dug deeper into the nearly indecipherable website and learned that one testing location would be open each day, usually the Circle Drive location.
This weekend, county workers get three days off for New Year’s.
But as late as Thursday, in the last hours of his final work day of 2021, county administrator G.K. Maenius was in the office past sundown updating and fixing the list of test locations.
“All these sites are getting overwhelmed,” he said.
Several workers in his office are sick, too. Only about a third of the staff could come to work, he said.
“That throws everything into chaos,” he said.
Tell us about it.
This story was originally published December 31, 2021 at 5:45 AM.
