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Whatcom County expands COVID-19 testing options

Battling the omicron variant calls for heavy duty solutions in order to keep moving forward

David Powers has his nose swabbed to test for COVID-19 at Northwest Laboratory's Bellingham Airport test site Tuesday.
David Powers has his nose swabbed to test for COVID-19 at Northwest Laboratory's Bellingham Airport test site Tuesday. (Hailey Hoffman/Cascadia Daily News)
By Victoria Corkum News Intern

Steve Bennett resorted to crowdsourcing rapid tests for COVID-19 a few weeks ago after local pharmacies ran out.

Bennett, a Western Washington University assistant health professor, finally found one from a friend. The situation underscored how the highly transmissible omicron coronavirus variant sent Whatcom County residents and the rest of the country into a frenzy to find tests.

The situation was never more pronounced than at Bellingham International Airport last month where harsh weather forced county officials to reduce hours of the drive-through testing site and asked residents to cancel appointments. 

photo  COVID-19 testing technician C.J. Barashkoff works at the Northwest Laboratory drive-through testing site on Tuesday. (Hailey Hoffman/Cascadia Daily News)  

On Jan. 11,  Whatcom County Health Department released a statement saying, “if you can’t get either a PCR test or a rapid test, assume you have COVID-19 and stay home.”

But just as test availability has increased in the past week, questions remain about how prepared public health officials are for the next surge of COVID-19.

The consensus among local and national health experts is they are as prepared as they can be.

“We’re doing everything we can to expand [testing] to offer more for people but I really don’t know what this is going to look like in the next couple weeks,” said Bri Spencer, Northwest Pathology Molecular Laboratory manager. “I know there’s a lot of frustration, stress and fear in our community. All we can do is support each other and keep moving forward.”

Bellingham’s Northwest Laboratory, which has partnered with Whatcom County Health Department to administer tests, has new available slots for people suffering from COVID-19 symptoms or who have been in close contact with someone who has a confirmed positive case. 

The enhanced service announced Friday will help health officials get more people tested quicker, something that has been a challenge during the omicron surge, county epidemiologist Cindy Hollinsworth said in a statement.


Availability of home-testing kits, another option, has been hit and miss. Four free tests can be ordered from the federal government. The Washington State Department of Health offered up to five free tests but ran out of home kits on Friday, the day the website launched.

Whatcom County health leaders said they can’t do much more to prepare for another wave when, and if, it happens.

“What we’ve noticed now is there are a lot of constraints on people’s ability to expand any efforts,” county co-public health officer Amy Harley said during a Jan. 11 news conference. “Everybody is doing pretty much all they can.”

Northwest Laboratory’s Spencer added that the omicron variant that surfaced in South Africa at the end of November caught health officials off guard.

“Our community had lowered the need for testing at that point,” she said. “Trying to maintain staff with lower volumes and then staff up as fast as we can to continue to keep our sites active is really challenging.”

Erika Lautenbach, Whatcom County Health Department director, blamed staffing issues for the problems during a video news conference. 

“It’s not the swabs, it’s not the lab capacity, it’s been staffing,” she said. “The magnitude of the need is so far beyond anything we’ve ever seen before that to be able to ramp up effectively would take a bit of time.”

Hartley and other health officials continue to promote vaccines; 68% of Whatcom County residents eligible for vaccines have received them. But only about half of those eligible for booster doses have gotten the third shot, Hartley said at the media briefing. 

The latest variant has been mild in most cases, particularly for those who have received booster vaccinations. But omicron remains highly infectious and has led to more than 2,100 deaths per day in the United States, according to the New York Times database.

U.S. lawmakers sharply criticized the Biden Administration’s top health officials two weeks ago for the slow response to the recent spike in COVID cases. Dr. Anthony S. Fauci, Biden’s chief medical adviser, said in a Senate hearing the virus had “fooled everybody all the time, from the time it first came in, to delta, to now omicron.”

“Omicron is seemingly as infectious as glitter,” Bennett said. “If you get near it, it seems to get on you.” 

He said health officials need to rely on more than vaccines to stop the spread of the virus. Some of the other tools he recommended are more testing and wearing surgical masks over cloth ones.

“One of the challenges with our national and local policy around vaccines is that there seemed to be this idea that vaccines were going to be our magic bullet,” Bennett said. “Vaccines became the sole focus of many people. Vaccines are one of an arsenal of interventions that need to be deployed in order to effectively curb the pandemic.”

Infectious disease specialists have sounded optimistic that the situation will improve by mid-February. While no one can predict what comes next some experts say the level of immunity in the U.S. population will help against any new variants.

Bennett, though, warned against celebrating the pandemic’s end once the omicron surge decreases.

“It’s always best to be optimistic, but be prepared,” he said.

Resources for testing:

– Whatcom County Health Department – Appointments can be made by registering at www.testdirectly.comwhatcom or calling 360-778-6075

– Washington State Department of Health – Order at-home test kids at covidtests.gov or by calling 1-800-232-0233

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