More free COVID-19 testing is coming to Cambria. Here’s when
The county Public Health Department is holding another set of pop-up clinics for free COVID-19 tests from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. June 24 and 25 in Cambria, according to online notices posted recently by the department, the Cambria Community Services District and the Cambria Community Healthcare District.
Appointments are required, as is some form of identification. Due to local demand and the limited number of available 30-minute windows for the five-minute tests, some eligibility restrictions may apply.
For details and appointments, call 805-543-2444 between 8 a.m. and 4 p.m. on weekdays or at www.emergencyslo.org/testing. According to that website, no walk-up registrations will be permitted.
According to the Public Health Department, these “pop-up testing clinics will be staffed by county employees and analyzed at the Public Health Department lab, which has recently increased its testing capacity to 300 tests per day.”
“We continue to increase access to testing in SLO County and now are able to do so through our own laboratory,” Penny Borenstein, county health officer, said. “We previously used a vendor for other pop-up clinics and were frustrated to see that some tests failed and many were seriously delayed in their results. To remedy this, our own staff and lab will now provide our residents with timely and accurate test results.”
Results from approximately 300 tests reportedly were delayed or are incomplete because of an error related to that vendor’s lab. However, the complete results that were received were accurate, county officials said.
Some of those failures were from U.S. Health Clinics labs in Cambria on June 1 and 2, according to recent communications received by some North Coast residents. Ultimately, if those people still wanted to know if they were carrying the virus, they had to schedule new appointments and repeat the process.
For instance, Michele Sherman of Cambria got an emailed notification June 12 which said in part that the “test tube that you submitted leaked and the critical testing fluid spilled into the specimen bag, generally because the top was not properly attached.”
The Public Health Department notice to Sherman said that “the present analysis failed (due to) specimen damage: COVID-19 sample tube leaking in the specimen bag.”
“A new sample is required to repeat this test,” the notice read.
