When Aaron McManus went to the Northshore Clinical Labs’ COVID testing site in Forest Park on Christmas Eve, the scene that greeted him struck him as “surreal.”
Employees wore mismatched cloth masks that appeared to have been brought from home, and 6-foot social distancing was not maintained, he said. When McManus was tested, another customer was about 3 or 4 feet away, and both were unmasked for testing. At one point, an employee standing about 2 feet from an unmasked customer removed her own mask to demonstrate how to take a specimen.
“It just seemed to me like total incompetence,” McManus said.
To make matters worse, 10 days later, he still hadn’t received his test result.
People stand outside the Center for COVID Control COVID-19 testing trailer at 1527 S. Harlem Ave. in Forest Park on Jan. 4, 2022. (Erin Hooley / Chicago Tribune)
At a time when pop-up COVID-19 testing sites are under increasing scrutiny, customers interviewed by the Tribune expressed an array of concerns, ranging from improper masking and social distancing to a misdated test result, delays in receiving test results of a week or more, and phone calls that go unanswered.
Audrey Deziel, of Oak Park, said she waited nine days for results of a rapid test taken at a trailer set up by Center for COVID Control in Forest Park. After 14 days, her boyfriend was still waiting for his test result.
Jennifer Ptak, of Logan Square, said when she called Center for COVID Control at 3311 W. North Ave. to get information about a delayed test result, she was put on hold for five hours.
And some customers at Northshore’s Forest Park location noted an unusual “no news is good news” policy. Rapid-test results are only reported if they are positive, said Stephanie Simmons, of Oak Park, who went to the testing site on Christmas Eve. You get no notification if you test negative.
Northshore Clinical Labs released a written statement saying the company is facing an unprecedented increase in demand for PCR tests as well as staffing shortages and regrets any longer-than-anticipated wait times for test results. The company added that it expects all of its third-party operators to comply with all regulations and protocols, including proper use of personal protective equipment and reporting results of rapid tests, regardless of the outcome.
“Northshore is currently reviewing the (issues identified by the Tribune) and will take all appropriate corrective actions,” the statement said. Northshore Clinical Labs is not affiliated with NorthShore — Edward-Elmhurst Health, formerly known as NorthShore University HealthSystem.
Officials at Center for COVID Control could not be reached for comment.
The state’s pop-up testing sites are classified as businesses, not health clinics, and as such are not regulated by the Illinois Department of Public Health. But following a Block Club Chicago report on problems at COVID-19 pop-up sites, Gov. J.B. Pritzker said earlier this week that his office referred the issue of questionable pop-up COVID-19 testing sites to the Illinois attorney general and is working with the attorney general’s office to “make sure those operations are no longer doing to customers and patients what they have been doing.”
Northshore Clinical Labs COVID-19 testing center on Harlem Avenue in Forest Park appears closed on Jan. 4, 2022. (Erin Hooley / Chicago Tribune)
“Some of them may be fly-by-night pop-up testing, where all they’re doing is taking the swabs and putting it in the reagent, the liquid … and then they’re not taking responsibility for how long it takes to get that test back from a lab that they may not have a very strong relationship with, and that is an enormous problem, and, in fact, some of them are not even returning results at all,” Pritzker said.
He said the state is directing people in search of tests to free, community-based sites, which have recently expanded hours, and local public health departments.
In recent weeks, a lack of available appointments at established pharmacies and health clinics has driven people to pop-ups with widely varying policies and procedures.
“I feel like it’s kind of the wild, Wild West, where there’s no oversight,” said Ptak, 36, the stay-at-home mother of a 9-month-old.
No state agency has statutory authority to regulate businesses providing testing services, though the state health department regulates labs that process tests, said Jordan Abudayyeh, a spokeswoman for the governor, in a statement. She encouraged people who encounter testing sites that they don’t believe are operating properly to file complaints on the attorney general’s website: www.IllinoisAttorneyGeneral.gov.
“We look forward to working with our partners in the General Assembly to address any gaps in existing state law,” Abudayyeh said.
Without oversight from the state, it can be difficult for the public to know which COVID-19 testing sites to trust, said Dr. Eve Bloomgarden, chief operating officer and co-founder of advocacy group Illinois Medical Professionals Action Collaborative Team.
“The tragedy is that we tell everyone to test, and we don’t give anyone access to tests or make them affordable, so people had to scramble,” Bloomgarden said.
The advocacy group recently asked in a letter to Pritzker that he take a number of actions to decrease stress on the health care system during this latest surge, including increasing free or subsidized access to rapid antigen testing, with prioritization for those at greatest risk, people who are low-income and essential workers.
Simmons, 42 and a teacher, took her 12-year-old daughter and 9-year-old twins to be tested at the Northshore Clinical Labs site in Forest Park on Dec. 24. Check-in was very disorganized, Simmons said, with shared pens for filling out little slips of paper. Directions were minimal, and people weren’t standing 6 feet away from each other.
“Compared to other tests we’ve gotten, it was just kind of shocking,” Simmons said
Her daughter had symptoms of COVID-19, including a loss of taste and smell and a fever, and Simmons had already tested positive for COVID-19, as had her husband.
Still, her daughter’s rapid test came back negative and 11 days later, Simmons still hadn’t received her daughter’s PCR results.
“It seems very likely she had COVID, which makes this even more upsetting,” Simmons said.
At Northshore’s testing center at 3302 N. Milwaukee Ave. in Chicago, Mary Tsai, 34, of Logan Square experienced a reasonable 15-minute wait in line for testing. Her rapid results came back in 10 minutes. The site seemed fine, she said.
But then she started wondering about her delayed PCR test result. She called Northshore three to five times, she said, and the phone just rang and rang; she could never reach a person. By Monday, she had been waiting 15 days for her PCR test result.
“It’s gotten a little bit weird,” she said.
Less than 2 miles down the road from Northshore’s Forest Park location is a small trailer that functions as a Center for COVID Control testing site.
Deziel, 27, and her boyfriend went there Dec. 20 for rapid test results. When she got her results nine days later, she noticed that the email from Center for COVID Control said she had been tested Dec. 28. That wasn’t true, she said.
“I can’t help but wonder, is it my specimen that they ran? How did they know?” she said.
On Monday, Deziel said her boyfriend still hadn’t gotten his results back.
Ptak, the Logan Square woman who was put on hold for five hours while inquiring about a test at a Center for COVID Control site in Chicago, said she waited 13 days for results from a PCR test taken Dec. 21.
When she called to find out what was happening, she was put on hold. She was told she was No. 42 in line, she said, and decided to accept the challenge. The process went fairly smoothly with good information about how much of a wait remained, and she was able to put her phone down and do other things. Then, when she reached No. 10, her progress slowed to a crawl.
Two hours later, she finally got to the front of the line — only to be met by the “Beep!” of an answering machine.
“I never reached a human,” she said.
nschoenberg@chicagotribune.com
lschencker@chicagotribune.com
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