Clinician Matt Wolbach moved between cars Monday afternoon at the Summit County Health Department Office in Kamas, braving an at-times fierce snowstorm to administer COVID-19 tests as a steady stream of people continued to pull in.
The Health Department holds standing testing availability from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. on Mondays, Tuesdays and Fridays at its three offices: one in Kamas, one in Coalville and one in Park City.
While the wait in Kamas was a few minutes on Monday, the line at the Quinn’s Junction location stretched to 20 cars or more.
The rapid tests are free and results are available in an hour or less. But only a few places around Park City are offering PCR tests, which the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention say are more sensitive and produce fewer false negative results than rapid antigen tests do. PCR tests are also required for some travel.
PCR tests are available at Park City Hospital, the University of Utah Redstone Health Center and Kamas FoodTown. Each has its own registration process.
Park City Hospital has self-serve saliva tests. The hospital requires testers to register online and obtain a specific Visit ID number via text or email before submitting the sample. Registration is possible at Intermountain’s website, and there’s also a sign near the kit pickup spot that has a QR code that links directly to the signup portal.
Symptoms are not required to be tested, though information accompanying the tests says that tests for symptomatic patients are free.
Tests are available at the Redstone Health Clinic, but only for those who have symptoms of COVID-19 or who have been in close contact with someone who was diagnosed with the disease. Michael Bronson, senior director for clinic operations for University of Utah Health, said testers do not need to be University of Utah patients to get a test.
He said the health system caps the number of tests it does and has been consistently hitting that cap.
“We actually have been maxing out on our capacity to provide tests at Redstone and actually throughout the University of Utah Health system for some time this year,” he said. “As I said, we've limited our capacity so that we can have our staff available to care for other kinds of patients and do other kinds of work, which are also important at this time.”
Bronson said the tests come with no out-of-pocket expenses to the patient, though the clinic does ask for insurance information and tries to bill insurers. University of Utah Health offers both saliva-based and nasal swab tests, and results are usually available in around 24 hours. To register for a test, visit healthcare.utah.edu/coronavirus/.
Kamas FoodTown is partnering with a national program to administer free PCR COVID-19 tests. To register, visit DoINeedACovidTest.com and navigate to the Kamas location. According to Courtney Thomas, a pharmacy technician there, the store is offering a nasal swab test that goes deep into a patient’s nasal cavity.
Thomas said there’s been a recent uptick in testing and that it’s taking around 3-4 days to get results.
There are many ways to get free antigen tests around Summit County, though the sites near Park City have been extraordinarily busy recently.
In addition to the three county Health Department sites, the state is sponsoring a testing site on Wednesdays at Park City High School.
According to pharmacy technicians, there is no in-store testing at any of the following sites: Smith’s Food and Drug, Walmart, Walgreens, The Park City Market and either Fresh Market location.
Employees at The Market and Fresh Market said those stores sell at-home tests when they can get supplies, but were sold out as of early Tuesday afternoon.
