Mark Siddall
October 29, 2020
(If you are actually looking to get tested, simply go to this page now instead of trying to navigate your way there like I did. )
UPDATE!: Since the posting of this blog piece by me, NYC has now put the link to testing sites at the TOP of their page instead of the bottom. AND no longer are there preposterous phone numbers for testing sites. And there are hot links that are meaningful. Huzzah
After dropping off my son at his public school in New York City this morning, I learned that we are in the minority. Mayor de Blasio announced yesterday that just 26% of NYC children have attended any in-person classes since a month ago, when schools reopened several weeks late. That’s only half of the kids who were supposed to show up in the hybrid approach that we chose for our boy entering kindergarten.
This is discouraging. The single most important tool we have right now to fight SARS CoV 2 is testing and contact tracing. Don Hopkins used to tell me every time we talked in the making of the Countdown to Zero Exhibition that “You cannot treat what you do not track”. And while contact tracing is critical to achieving early treatment outcomes for COVID-19, random surveillance testing (even anonymous testing) has a role to play in monitoring community level incidence of the virus as we spin into a dangerous second wave.
Get Tested NOW!
A sign in the 72nd street MTA station admonished me to get tested now! New York City’s drive to get anyone, indeed everyone tested, is a worthy goal. But, my experience today was not encouraging.
There are three distinct online entry points for COVID-19 testing information. The city health department’s COVID-19 Main Page requires you to scroll past Hallowe’en warnings, how to go to the gym, or shop, or safely eat out… all before telling you to get tested.
The NYC Health Department coronavirus page is much more helpful than the COVID-19 Main Page, if not as readily stumbled upon. It’s prompt and immediately shows a map of the city’s hotspots. Helpfully, there’s the option of toggling a variety of languages. It announces “NYC: Get Tested Now!”
The NYC Health & Hospitals landing page for testing is English-only. In May, Mayor de Blasio made the controversial decision to put the city’s Test and Trace Corps in the hands of NYCHH, which is not the same as the City Health Department. In any case, like NYC Health, it agrees that “All New Yorkers Should Get Tested“. And it has a prominent link for “Find a Testing Location Near You“.
All of the foregoing have a common link to the city Health Department’s Covid-19 Testing page. And I got there on my phone as I rode the 1 train uptown to Washington Heights. By this point I was well past 103rd.
I thought I’d see a map, or a place to enter an address, or a zip code. Better yet, since I have Location Services turned on for my iPhone, maybe a big red button saying “Testing Sites Near You NOW”.
Nope. I have put the pages of this page all down the right side of my post here.
Instead of where to get tested (i.e., the point of the page) it starts with screen-after-screen of a cavalcade of the pedantic:
- What is COVID-19?
- What does the COVID-19 test consist of?
- Who can get tested?
- How often should I get tested?
- How long do results take? and
- Privacy
This amounted to fully 4 pages of scrolling before finally seeing ostensibly the point of the page. Finally, the hoped-for: “Where can I get tested?” And, remarkably, I still couldn’t figure out where to get tested.
I had to scroll through 3 more pages of text variously itemizing where mobile units are set up in the outer boroughs that I can’t get to. Finally I arrived at the goldenrod colored Covid-19 Test Site Finder “brought to you by Castlight”.
You’re supposed to type your zip code “into the below”. Into exactly what, below, was not clear (apparently the page was TLDR even for the proofreader). Presumably a box. It wasn’t immediately obvious. I’m also supposed to notice that “The below map is provided and maintained by Castlight”. But there was no “below map”. No map at all.
I was approaching 168th and had to switch to a C.
Other important information was advice to “Call the testing site before you go” and that “Each coronavirus test provider will determine if testing is appropriate based on your symptoms, risk factors, and test availability.” This was not the message I thought I read from the city. I thought the city wants everyone tested frequently regardless of symptoms. Maybe the page needs updating.
More scrolling. In fact, that annoying scrolling-within-a-scrolling-window within a page scrolling and… huzzah… a box at the very bottom of the page allowed me to enter my zip code to find a testing site. Which I dutifully did: 10033.
I got a map! I selected a blue dot for the reassuringly titled “COVID Express”.
Notwithstanding the helpful blue hot-link that would allow my phone call with a mere touch of my finger, I judged that the number provided [(000) 000-0000] was not going to get me to anyone at “the testing site before I go”.
So I tried to click on the URL, only to find that, unlike the phone number, it wasn’t hot-linked… just text. Fine. So I typed in the URL myself. But I got it wrong. So I had to back out and memorized the text of the URL and typed that again in my phone’s browser: nyc.gov/health/covidexpress.
Having come all this way I discovered that there was only one time, in one place, in Manhattan today to get a test from COVID Express. But, it wasn’t the same as my my blue dot on the map above. It was way own at 100 and Riverside and I was now walking out of the 181st Street station loaded down with bags. Other than that location, there were a couple of places in Queens and the Bronx to schedule an appointment tomorrow or the next day. I wasn’t going to backtrack and there wasn’t enough time to get there in time for the appointment anyway.
Instead, I followed the link inviting me to “look for other testing sites near” me. Yep… it redirected me right back to the top of the ten-pager (on the right here) I had been to already. And no, it did not know where I was in order to tell me what might be “near”.
I was in a do-loop, and starting to think the city really didn’t want me to get tested.
I quickly skipped the 10 pages to the bottom this time so I could type my zip code into “the below” (which I now know to mean a box). That let me find a CityMD on the map in my neighborhood at 181st. I called the number provided on the “below map”, got past the recording, hit zero, spoke to a human and was told it’s just a walk-in, no symptoms or appointment necessary.
Wearily she added “There’s going to be a line … and a wait… in the rain…”
We’re screwed.
If we cannot get this right, this fundamental thing, we’re dooming hundreds more to painful gasping deaths in the months ahead. The second wave is upon us.
Schools are Natural Community Gathering Points for Testing
Test and trace models for UK schools suggest that either a majority of students have to be tested or that a majority of contacts have to be traced. There are 1,700 public schools in New York City. Even at 26% attendance and only 2 or 3 times a week that’s about a half a million opportunities to test on-arrival. And that’s just the students. There are tens of thousands of parents, grandparents or other caregivers in New York City communities dropping those kids off. What would it cost to station swabbing sites at the 700 public elementary schools?
Because of the need for structure and distance but limited outdoor lining-up space, parents and students have set-times for drop-off. Neither early nor late is an option. Pity the other 5 yr olds and their parents with me this morning who arrived 10 minutes early in a cold rain standing across the street from the school with no shelter.
It’s a miserable start to the day. Only to have to cross a street when our time comes, only to stand in line 6 feet a part as we fumble for our smartphones to be able to show a school administrator that we auto-answered “No” to all of the questions in the health screening questionnaire.
Just like the day before. And the day before that.
Imagine if there were tents.
Heated tents.
With coffee and tea provided by local coffee shops (there must be as many Starbucks as schools in the city).
And testing.
Imagine what we could accomplish every single day.
Imagine the sense of community and common purpose.
There’s a job open for Director for NYC Public School Testing – Test & Trace Corps.
I applied October 24.
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