Many employers in Oregon are sending healthy workers in for COVID-19 testing when a coworker gets sick. Public health officials wish they’d stop.
Debbie Lamberger said it’s becoming a regular occurrence: Coworkers arrive in a group of cars at one of Oregon Health & Science University’s mobile testing sites to request COVID-19 testing, all saying someone at their workplace recently tested positive. Now, their boss has directed them to the testing site.
That’s what these mobile testing sites are for, and OHSU has two: one at Portland Expo Center and one at Hillsboro Stadium.
But upon further discussion, Lamberger, who is OHSU’s director of ambulatory operations, told Street Roots, she’ll discover the patients don’t meet the criteria for testing.
“I’ll say, ‘Have you been within 6 feet for more than 15 minutes?’” Lamberger said. “As soon as I ask the question specifically, people wise up, and they know there’s only one right answer if they’re going to get tested.”
But, she said, patients tell her they can’t return to work unless they can prove they’ve tested negative for the virus.
They are often low-wage workers or people who are not covered under Oregon’s sick time law , Lamberger said. The law offers a week of paid sick time to employees at companies that employ 10 or more people and unpaid-but-protected sick time to workers at smaller businesses.
This means without a test to show they’re negative, they may temporarily lose their source income while they quarantine.
She gave an example of a group of workers at a small construction company she turned away because they didn’t meet the criteria for testing.
“It does result in hardship for all of these workers who don’t have sick time when the lowest-barrier site in the state, which is us, we won’t do it,” Lamberger said.
Lamberger and Jessica Guernsey, Multnomah County’s deputy director of public health, agreed that in ideal circumstances, testing as many people as possible would be key to helping contain the virus.
Experts touted broadly available on-demand testing as a key component in keeping South Korea’s case count low, for example. To date, the country has reported 12,460 recovered cases and just 293 deaths.
“Do I agree that testing should keep everyone safe? Absolutely,” Guernsey said. “Is the reality on the ground consistent, given the lack of testing strategy?”
Instead, public health officials are urging employers not to make testing a requirement for returning to the jobsite unless there’s a known exposure at a worksite where individuals work in close proximity.
And, they’re prioritizing tests for individuals with symptoms, those with recent close exposures — such as family members or coworkers who work side by side — as well as individuals in high-risk groups.
“We can’t make employers not ask people (to get tested),” Guernsey said. “We’re asking them to follow CDC requirements and not refer people for testing if they haven’t had symptoms or a recent exposure.”
ZOOM+Care’s chief medical officer, Erik Vanderlip, said his chain of urgent care clinics is also seeing patients who were sent in for testing at the request of their employer.
He said ZOOM+Care is “actively working with employers to develop a COVID-19 detection program that will help keep their workplaces safe and productive.”
But, it’s difficult to determine how many employers are making negative COVID-19 test results a condition of returning to work — and what industries they’re in.
Employment status is not part of standard intake questions and not something Multnomah County’s health clinics are tracking, Guernsey said.
The state’s Bureau of Labor and Industries began tracking employment complaints related to COVID-19 at the beginning of April and released a list of 28 complaints to Street Roots.
The list didn’t give specific details on the reports, but did categorize them by nature of complaint. Two, for example, were related to sick leave, five were related to disability, one to race, one to sex and one to whistleblowing.
More than half fell under the umbrella of the Oregon Occupational Health & Safety Administration.
According to Oregon OSHA spokesperson Aaron Corvin, the majority of COVID-19-related complaints his agency has received “have, by and large, involved allegations of failures to follow COVID-19 restrictions” including social distancing, mask wearing and other measures.
“More testing is a good thing,” Corvin said. “Employers implementing robust testing protocols is in line with universal controls meant to address a public health crisis.”
According to Lamberger, some large employers have reached out to OHSU about providing onsite testing at workplaces.
“Here’s the unfortunate catch-22: We’ve had a number of employers reach out to us and say, ‘We’ll pay if you test our employee,’ — but we don’t have the staff,” Lamberger said.
Instead, OHSU has referred employers to private lab partners, and OHSU is trying to increase its staffing for tests despite reporting financial losses related to the pandemic.
According to Oregon Health Authority spokesperson Delia Hernández, the state currently has the capacity to process 41,000 weekly tests. Last week OHSU processed about 3,200 tests.
During the week of July 6-12, less than 33,000 people in Oregon were tested for COVID-19 in Oregon. That’s 8,000 fewer than the state says it has the capacity to test.
As of Friday, 323,478 tests had been conducted statewide since the start of the pandemic.
“We’re doing a swab every 90 seconds,” Lamberger said.
So far, local labs are reporting turnaround times for test results that fall within national guidelines.
“We turn around test results within 48 to 72 hours from the point at which it’s collected at one of the mobile sites,” OHSU spokesperson Erik Robertson told Street Roots.
Legacy has said it can get test results in two to three days.
But nationally, labs say they’re so overwhelmed with test results that they’re not getting results to patients for a week or more — and that chips away at the usefulness of testing.
Multnomah County officials say turnaround time for test results locally has varied since the pandemic began — and it depends on which category a patient is in. The Department of Health and Human Services has defined three patient priority levels, with hospitalized patients and health care workers with symptoms being highest priority.
Right now, those patients are getting test results within 24 hours, Multnomah County spokesperson Kate Wilson said.
Patients in Multnomah County who fall into the second priority category — those who are in long-term care facilities with symptoms, patients older than 65 with symptoms, patients with underlying conditions with symptoms and first responders with symptoms — are currently getting results within two days, Wilson said.
And finally, for patients in the third priority category — those who are critical infrastructure workers with symptoms, individuals not in the other categories who have symptoms, health care facility workers, first responders and individuals in communities experiencing high numbers of COVID-19 hospitalizations — the turnaround time is 11 to 12 days.
Wison confirmed that the county does not keep track of the number of people who ask for tests but are turned away.
“If we start testing everyone, it’s going to take two weeks to get tests back and then there’s no point in testing,” Lamberger said.
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