Covid-19 🦠 testing in the USA 🇺🇸
My experience when on 19 April 2021 I completed a self-test for COVID-19 at a local CVS here in Austin, TX. In order to do the test, a day earlier, I searched for a Rapid Antigen Test, made an appointment online and then proceeded to the drive-thru at my scheduled testing time. On arrival I am directed into one of two lanes in the drive through and proceed to wait while another customer is performing his self-test in the vehicle in front of me.
He eventually completes his test but barely gets his testing kit into the styrofoam lined metal box affixed to the side of the building with one wire visible running through a small hole into the building where I assume a thermometer is reading the temperature in the box holding all of those testing samples. This person put a cotton swab so deep in his nose it tickled his brain, but couldn't get the bag completely in the hole? I am starting to doubt the self-testing concept already.
A young woman is working as fast as she can packing prescriptions into a cylinder being sent back and forth between customers in their car and the employee via pneumatic tube transport. Not once did I see either party sanitise the cylinder; and the woman working inside was wearing a mask, but no gloves or other PPE. Eventually I am called on via drive-thru mic and speaker and am asked verification information for my testing appointment and given blanket instructions on how the testing procedure will proceed. She packs a plastic back with a sealed swab, a small vial, an alcohol wipe, and passes it through a drawer - test kit ready, customer ready, prepare for manual insertion into brain via nasal passage...
...but wait! The woman has to physically leave the store to give someone their prescription. They are picking up so many pill bottles that the stapled (sealed?) paper bag will not fit in the cylinder. She graciously asks me to wait until she is back in order to start the test which she will then guide me through step-by-step. My doubts are not dispelled, but hey it's testing time so let's just get this over and done with. Turns out I am taking a PCR test, not a Rapid Antigen Test. So results will be back in 24-48 hours, not the half-day which I thought I had signed up for. Annoying but I figure with all of my negative testing history from Berlin plus more than a year of social distancing and isolating the result will be the same as the PCR test I took 5 days prior.
This final mix-up, coupled with the initial discovery that in order to get free testing you need to lie about symptoms or contact with someone who has or has tested positive for COVID-19 feels like the final nail in any belief in the American Health Care system.
What about the results? Yes there were test results, and instead of answering questions they raised many more concerns, forced dramatic actions, and hammered in the actual last nail in the American Health Care Coffin.
