PACIFIC COUNTY — When it comes to testing for covid-19, Pacific County and Southwest Washington are lagging behind the statewide rate.

As of April 19, 169 Pacific County residents have been tested for the virus, according to the Washington State Department of Health. That number represents 0.77% of the county’s total population. Statewide, about 1.35% of Washington residents with a known county of residence have been tested. About 38,000 Washington residents who have yet to be assigned a county for data purposes have also been tested.

Other Southwest Washington counties — Grays Harbor, Lewis, Wahkiakum, Cowlitz and Clark counties — also trail the statewide rate by wide margins. The six counties combined have tested 5,112 people, about 0.65% of the total population.

Pull Quote

‘We’re not turning away anyone who is symptomatic, which is different from a lot of counties right now.’

Katie Lindstrom

Pacific County Department of Health

Describing local availability of covid test kits

While larger counties like King, Snohomish and Spokane are more likely to have tested a higher rate of their population, smaller counties like Lincoln, Ferry and Columbia are also easily outpacing Southwest Washington counties in testing capacity.

Dr. Steven Krager, public health officer for Pacific and several other Southwest Washington counties, said several factors could be at play in explaining why the testing rate can vary greatly between counties. He thinks some of the disparity between counties’ testing rates can be attributed to how early counties began reporting positive cases, which were the counties that were more likely to receive testing swabs and personal protective equipment.

Snohomish County, with a population of more than 800,000 and the first county in the U.S. to report a case of covid-19 on Jan. 20, is one of just two counties (along with San Juan) in the state where more than 2% of the county’s residents have been tested. In Clallam County, with a population of 77,331 and which reported its first case on March 18, just 0.46% of its population has been tested, the lowest rate in the state.

For Krager, it made sense for personal protective equipment to be sent to the places that had more reported cases in the early stages of the pandemic and therefore urgently needed it to protect healthcare workers. It made less sense, he said, for testing swabs to be prioritized and mostly limited to counties that had reported a positive case.

“You still need to test and find those cases. I don’t know [how much of a factor it played] in explaining these disparities, but I think it might have had a small role,” Krager said.

A county’s overall healthcare resources and how those resources are distributed throughout the county may also play a part in how much testing is able to be done, Krager said. Most testing, he noted, is done at hospitals or clinics.

Many of the smaller counties in the state are fortunate if they have even one clinic in their county, Krager said. Pacific County is in a nice situation compared to other smaller counties, he noted, with it having two hospitals and other clinics. However, resources in the county are still fairly limited.

“A lot of it comes down to healthcare accessibility, so are people able to easily access a clinic or a hospital?” said Krager. “There’s a lot of people who — and this is the case whether it’s covid-19 or something else — if they’re not dying, they’re not going to go to the hospital because it’s two hours away and they don’t have good access.”

Last week, Pacific County wrapped up its third week of offering drive-through testing in Long Beach and South Bend. It was also the first week that the county began screening any person who was experiencing any of the covid-19 symptoms. Previously, only symptomatic healthcare workers, public safety workers, essential employees, people who are immunocompromised, pregnant women, nursing home residents and those over the age 65 qualified for testing at the drive-through sites.

Krager said the county was following state guidelines in determining which people qualified for the priority testing. Those state guidelines are somewhat based on guidelines from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which classifies hospitalized patients and symptomatic healthcare workers as the highest testing priority.

“We need — especially when we were concerned about healthcare capacity — we need those healthcare workers to be working so the healthcare system doesn’t get overwhelmed,” Krager said.

The decision on when and how to expand testing is based on the resources the county has available, as well as how much demand there is from the priority groups.

“And then it becomes a resource question. How much demand is there among our current prioritization groups? And if there’s not enough demand, then we’ve been opening it up to more and more groups, basically. It kind of depends on how many calls we’re getting a week,” Krager said.

Katie Lindstrom, director of the Pacific County Department of Health and Human Services, said the county will be resupplied with 160 tests whenever it runs out of kits, meaning resources should not be an issue.

“We’re not turning away anyone who is symptomatic, which is different from a lot of counties right now,” Lindstrom said.

Next week, drive-through testing will be expanded to four days a week in the county, with testing held in Long Beach on Tuesday and Friday and in South Bend on Monday and Thursday. The county plans to alternate testing times between the morning and afternoon to try and accommodate people’s schedules. The goal of the expanded testing dates, Lindstrom said, is to decrease the number of days people have to wait after symptoms first appear.