COVID-19 testing company partners with North Texas nonprofits to meet community needs

Antoine Howard drives from his home in downtown Dallas to Arlington almost every week to get tested for COVID-19.

Howard, a fitness instructor and personal trainer, works with anywhere from 25 to 30 clients in group sessions, so frequent testing is a must.

“I’m always around people,” said Howard, owner of Lift’ed Fitness. “It’s just preventative maintenance.”

Howard typically receives his results within 36 hours, and the testing process itself is “seamless,” which is why he consistently goes to the Shell gas station on Green Oaks Boulevard for his tests.

The site is operated by GoGetTested, a consortium run by the Texas Health and Human Services Commission and WellHealth, one of the state’s five official testing vendors.

Formed in June, GoGetTested has about 30 sites in North Texas locations, including Arlington, Denton and Irving.

The testing partnership, which also includes HealthTrackRx and WellPay, sets up drive-thru sites in parking lots of churches, gas stations, nonprofits and areas where underserved communities can easily access them.

South Dallas has less than 1,100 cumulative coronavirus cases, a relatively low number compared to the over 5,000 in Cockerel Hill and Pleasant Grove, according to county data. However, the southern sector’s testing options are scarce, unlike areas north of Interstate 30, according to a map from the Texas Division of Emergency Management.

“The community around South Dallas and the counties immediately adjacent to the southern area — we recognize that they are more medically underserved than other areas,” WellHealth CEO Ahmad Gaber said.

“They’re not forgotten. We have ongoing conversations on a weekly basis with county health officials, emergency managers, state-level emergency managers around making sure that access is where it needs to be.”

GoGetTested isn’t the first to seek out underserved communities. In the spring, the Texas Division of Emergency Management relied on military resources to perform testing across the state. But in early June, the agency switched to private vendors to free up the military for other disaster response.

Higher risk

Sharing Life Community Outreach, a Mesquite-based nonprofit, operates a food pantry and programs for low income families, individuals experiencing homelessness and immigrants without citizenship status.

Sharing Life’s Emporium Circle parking lot has transformed into a one-stop shop for food, testing and other services.

“Many of our clients are getting a ride from someone else since they don’t have a car,” said Teresa Jackson, Sharing Life’s CEO and founder. “If they’re able to come get their food [and] get the test… that has a very high value.”

In the Red Bird neighborhood, GoGetTested recently added a testing site at the Shell on South Hampton Road, where a CVS, car wash and Subway share the same parking lot.

“There’s a massive need for testing locations in COVID-19 hotspots,” said April White, a spokesperson for GoGetTested. “As a service to the Dallas community, we partnered with local businesses, including gas stations, to provide pop-up testing sites.”

Currently, the only other southern Dallas site is at Salem Institutional Baptist Church in South Dallas, but the company is forming new partnerships every day.

The zip code 75211, a predominantly Latino area in South Oak Cliff, has had the largest number of active COVID-19 cases in Dallas County for almost four months, according to county data. Neighboring ZIP codes in southern Dallas are faring almost the same.

County data also show that 75228 in far East Dallas and 75211 have the highest vulnerability indexes in the city, meaning that populations there are at higher risk for COVID due to ethnicity, preexisting health conditions and socioeconomic factors.

Kymberle L. Sterling, associate professor of health promotion and behavioral sciences at the University of Texas Health Sciences Center’s Dallas campus, said research proves that low-income and minority groups are being hit hardest by the pandemic.

“They’re disproportionately more likely to be front line or essential workers like retail or grocery store workers or public transit employees or health care workers or custodial staff,” Sterling said.

Language barriers have also caused limited access to resources during the pandemic.

In April, many Spanish-speaking immigrants felt ill-informed about the pandemic due in part to a breakdown in communication from government officials. Since then, city and county agencies have increased the number of news releases and other information about the virus shared in Spanish, but early on, concerned residents and community organizations were handling that responsibility.

Fast results

Local emergency departments and other agencies throughout Texas notify state officials when they have a need, and one of five vendors — Curative, DAVACO, Honu, United Memorial Medical Center and WellHealth — or a military team will set up a testing site. But private vendors also set up sites without state direction.

The Texas Division of Emergency Management’s map includes both state-operated and private testing sites and information about insurance requirements and test type.

“That’s another positive reason that we want to use some of these private vendors like WellHealth,” said Seth Christensen, a spokesperson for the Texas Division of Emergency Management. “They have connections and community partnerships.”

Both Curative and GoGetTested are known for their quick turnaround times for results. The military testing sites use Curative oral swabs, and Christensen said that the results come back in about 24 hours. GoGetTested’s website updates every minute with the available slots and average result times for each of their locations. All of them are under 48 hours.

Testing turnaround time has become a concern throughout the pandemic as multiple states have seen extensive delays and backlogs. In August, Dallas County ended Honu’s contract after tests promised to take no longer than 72 hours weren’t coming back until eight days later.

Sharing Life’s clients have referred their friends and family to the Balch Springs and Mesquite sites because of the short turnaround times. Jackson said their results haven’t taken longer than two days.

“[Clients have] heard a lot of stories about how long it takes in the line, and once the test is completed, the length of time to get the results back,” Jackson said.

“So when they learned about our testing site and how efficient it is, they were more willing to get tested.”