NC residents seek answers and peace of mind about COVID-19 at parking-lot test sites
Buzz and Linda Wilson were feeling fine Tuesday. But they figured they’d better get tested for the coronavirus after one of the people Buzz supervises on the housekeeping crew at Central Carolina Community College tested positive.
The Wilsons were first in line for free drive-thru coronavirus tests in the parking lot at the Dennis A. Wicker Civic Center on Tuesday afternoon. After learning about her husband’s co-worker, Linda Wilson searched online for coronavirus testing in Sanford and found this event, organized by the UNC Health system, Lee County and Piedmont Health Services, a community health center that serves a 14-county area.
“Rather be safe than sorry,” Buzz Wilson said from the front seat of the couple’s Nissan, where they would soon endure the eye-watering discomfort of a swab being twisted deep in their nasal cavity. “That’s the main thing; if you get tested, at least you know what’s going on.”
UNC Health has tested more than 112,000 people for coronavirus since the pandemic began, mostly at its 11 hospitals or affiliated respiratory diagnostic centers across the state. But UNC and other hospitals and community health centers have also held dozens of events like this one in parking lots across the state to let people get tested for free in their cars, closer to where they live and work.
“What we’re trying to do is eliminate as many barriers as possible,” said Dr. Amir Barzin, one of two doctors taking samples from people as they pulled up under a tent in the civic center lot.
Free testing is part of the state’s strategy to contain the coronavirus and prevent outbreaks of COVID-19; all the swabs taken in Sanford on Tuesday will be processed in the state lab. On Monday, the N.C. Department of Health and Human Services announced a website listing dozens of planned no-cost testing events across the state, many aimed at African-American, Hispanic and American Indian communities that have limited testing sites.
“Early identification of cases is vital to being able to hopefully contain the spread, especially in communities where it may be a little more difficult to seek medical care,” Barzin said. “If we can stop just one person who is positive from spreading it to two or three or four other people, then we are saving a lot of time and resources on the back end.”
Tuesday’s testing event was the fifth that UNC has held in Sanford with the county and Piedmont Health Services since June. Dr. Michael Herce, the other doctor taking samples Tuesday, said UNC decided to organize the events after large numbers of Latino workers from Chatham and Lee counties began showing up at the hospital in Chapel Hill with COVID-19 having not seen a doctor or been tested.
“It was really trying to get upstream of a problem that we saw in the hospital,” Herce said.
Hispanics make up about 10% of North Carolina’s population, but account for 38% of coronavirus cases in the state, according to DHHS. Herce said about a quarter of people UNC has tested in Sanford have been Hispanic and that 40% of them have been found to carry the virus.
A reluctance to get tested
Imelda Padrón, a Mexican immigrant who lives in nearby Broadway, says some in the Latino community avoid getting tested for the coronavirus because of a reluctance to seek medical care of any kind unless they’re seriously ill.
“Latinos are scared to get tested and prefer to take care of themselves at home if sick, and then won’t act until it’s too late or not do anything at all,” Padrón said as she waited to get tested Tuesday.
Padrón, who works at a key-making factory in Sanford with many other Latino immigrants, was getting tested for the third time, after she developed a mild fever. She worries about her risk of contracting the virus in the factory.
“I have asthma, and I have a son that depends on me,” she said. “I want to be sure that I don’t have [the virus].”
Like Padrón, Gumercindo Escobar worries about contracting coronavirus because his work in a factory in Sanford puts him in close contact with co-workers.
“Some sick people have popped up at work,” Escobar said in Spanish as he, his wife, María Reyes, and their two sons waited to get tested.
“Right now, we really just want to get tested because our children are going to start school soon and we want to make sure we’re healthy,” he said.
Reyes said Spanish-language media reports and the state’s messaging in Spanish about the dangers of COVID-19 and the ways to avoid contracting the virus have been clear.
“If someone doesn’t get the message, it’s because they don’t want to see it,” he said.
Sanford a coronavirus hot spot
Lee County has one of the highest rates of coronavirus cases per capita in the state, tied for sixth with Stanly County with 226 per 10,000 residents (in nearby Wake County, the rate is 128 per 10,000 residents). Lee County reported its 12th death from COVID-19 on Tuesday.
Herce said Latinos and African-Americans who work in agriculture and at poultry and meatpacking plants have made up a sizable number of cases from the region showing up at UNC. But Heath Cain, the Lee County health director, says the county has not been able to identify particular clusters of cases.
“There’s nothing really jumping out at us as a source,” Cain said Tuesday. “When you’ve got community transmission, it could be anywhere. So it creates a challenge. We really haven’t been able to lock down any potential source.”
UNC and Piedmont Health Services provide more than a simple test. People first register with the community health center, reporting any symptoms they may have, and then confer with a doctor, physician assistant or nurse practitioner from Piedmont Health via cellphone. Someone from the health center will call with the test results and continue checking on those who test positive.
Both Barzin and Herce, the UNC doctors, say a big benefit of events like this is providing people a “medical home” if they need one, someone they can call on both for coronavirus concerns and other health problems in the future.
More than 1,450 people have been tested since June at the Sanford screenings. Herce said the event has drawn fewer people this month than in June, which may be an encouraging sign.
“We’re slowly getting to saturation,” he said. “But whether we’ve reached the most hidden populations and routes to transmission is unclear.”
This story was originally published August 26, 2020 at 10:40 AM with the headline "NC residents seek answers and peace of mind about COVID-19 at parking-lot test sites."
