Today’s gratitude is tinged by frustration. We’re grateful for the free COVID-19 testing in Monongalia County. We really are. It’s an important step in the fight against coronavirus: It finds asymptomatic spreaders and gives peace of mind to individuals who aren’t sure if they contracted the coronavirus or not. But it was frustrating to attend Monday’s free community testing at the WVU Rec Center.
As was expected, particularly since testing took place on university property, WVU students, staff and faculty had their own line and own testing set up, which was partitioned from the community testing with a large, semi-opaque screen. What was not expected was for there to be only two individuals from the Monongalia County Health Department doing swab tests for the community and a dozen or so workers to assist the significantly fewer WVU-affiliated attendees.
What was also unexpected was the WVU side of the testing was by appointment only — walk-ins were not accepted. Which meant that any WVU student, faculty or staff who had not called ahead and made an appointment had to stay in the community line. Wait times varied from around 30 minutes to about an hour. Forcing WVU walk-ins to join the community line only exacerbated the problem.
Waiting in line for half an hour or more was a nuisance but an expected one, and people came prepared for the wait. However, it was frustrating to reach the front of a 50-plus person line to see the community testing side had only four registration and two swabbing stations — all of the workers constantly busy — then to look over at the WVU side, staffed with well over a dozen workers — some of whom had enough leisure time to sit and scroll through their smartphones — to assist fewer than a dozen people.
Allow us to restate that we are thankful for the free community testing — particularly for the workers — and grateful to the university for allowing it to take place at the Rec Center. But if WVU wants to be the community’s partner in the battle against COVID, it has to do better than it did Monday.
We understand the university staffs its testing site separately, so it would be unfair of us to insist it open its half (well, more like three-quarters) of the gym to the community. Rather, when the community line became outrageously long, WVU should have allowed university-affiliated walk-ins to move to its side. This would have taken some of the burden off the community line and the MCHD. WVU could have also spared someone to assist people in the community line get pre-registered, which would have minimized delays at the registration desk. (A note to the community: If you previously attended a community testing event and already registered with QLabs, simply have the QR code from your initial registration ready to be scanned.)
The fight against COVID requires patience, flexibility and adaptability. The community members were patient; WVU was neither flexible nor adaptable. Hopefully it does better for the upcoming December COVID testing dates.
