But at-home kits are hard to find in many places, and official testing sites booked up quickly over the holidays. For many people, pop-up testing sites appeared to be the only option left. The problem? Many are unregulated or inconsistent.
Residents in Chicago told Block Club that some pop-up testing sites were dirty, disorganized, or employed workers who didn’t wear masks or gloves. Some told insured people to claim on their forms that they were uninsured, and some appeared to charge for COVID-19 tests that should have been free.
Robert McNees of Chicago told Block Club that he and his family went to a pop-up and provided some of their information before seeing how disorganized it was inside. They left without getting tested.
“Just kind of given the chaos and everything, we thought that we probably wouldn’t be too confident in the results of the test, if we had collected it correctly or stored the sample correctly,” Mr. McNees said.
Even so, a few hours later he and his family all received emails from the company that runs the pop-up site. The emails said they had all tested negative for COVID-19.
The problem isn’t unique to Chicago. An Ohio resident told CBS affiliate WBNS that she was experiencing a delay in results from her nasal swab at a Columbus pop-up site, according to a Jan. 2 report.
The pop-up sent her nasal swab, a PCR test, to Linden, N.J.-based Accu Reference Medical Lab, the report said. Results from those tests are usually available 24 hours later. Accu Reference said increased call volume and staffing issues related to the pandemic were causing delays.
The Ohio resident told WBNS she had not received her results at least three days after she had a test done at the site, which was open Dec. 29 and Dec. 30.
“It’s not useful if they don’t give you the results that were promised,” Jacob Bennett, a Chicago resident who experienced a similar delay, told Block Club. “High level, I don’t have any reason to think that the actual testing is problematic — but not getting a result defeats the entire purpose.”.
“I honestly felt like if I didn’t have COVID after going, I would have it upon leaving,” one Chicago resident told Block Club after hearing unmasked and ungloved workers complain of headaches at a pop-up he went to.
The Federal Trade Commission posted a notice on April 30, 2020, warning that some COVID-19 testing sites could be scams.
