The demand for COVID-19 testing remains high in the Bay Area as cases surge due to the omicron variant.
The San Francisco Department of Public Health announced Sunday that some of their affiliated sites will have to temporarily reduce testing hours due to challenges beyond their control.
“Unfortunately, what is happening as I understand it is that our testing providers are suffering from the same challenges that other people are having. Businesses, schools, hospitals. And that they had a bunch of people call in sick and they don’t have adequate staff themselves to be able to staff the testing sites,” said San Francisco Supervisor Matt Haney.
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SFDPH also posted that even with some sites temporarily reducing hours, they have recently stretched testing capacity to an all-time high, with some sites tripling capacity.
Haney said more needs to be done with this.
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“We aren’t meeting the demand right now,” he said. “I’m glad we have been expanding but we have to expand further. We are in the midst of an unprecedented surge right now and testing is one of most important tools. We have to confront it.”
Haney added that more local state and federal help would be key and was glad to hear the governor’s budget proposal, which would massively boost the state’s COVID-19 response. He’s also hearing some people talk about the need for private providers to expand capacity as well.
