Dear PoPville

Photo by LaTur

“Dear PoPville,

My wife and I both recently tested positive for COVID and thankfully recovered. I thought we’d share our experience.

I applaud DC’s efforts to provide extensive and free testing. This program is the reason that we were able to quickly detect our infection and isolate from and protect our friends, neighbors, and co-workers. I know that residents in other states do not have this same resource.

However, after experiencing the full cycle of testing through quarantine, it is clear to us that DC’s exposure and tracing program is deeply flawed.

First, we both received our first phone calls from contact tracers approximately 48 hours after receiving our positive test results. By then, we had already spent hours online parsing through disparate guidance to figure out how to manage the quarantine. I can’t imagine how difficult it would be for less media savvy residents (let alone essential workers, providing distance learning environments for their children) to find and implement the right guidance during the most infectious period of the virus.

Second, while the contact tracers were nice, they texted us links to a supposed DC Covid guide that was supposed to answer all of our questions. That link did not work for either of us. (more…)

“Dear PoPville,

I’m hoping to crowdsource better options for rapid COVID testing or 24-hour turnaround tests. My partner is a front-line worker, and as a result, I have gotten tested many times over the past seven months. The hospital does not provide easy testing options for their employees or spouses, so each time I need to get a test, I find myself in the same Google search spiral, only to wind up with the same options.

I’ve gotten tests at the DC firehouses, CVS, and Walgreens, as well as through Pixel by LabCorp and Let’s Get Checked. While I think all of these options have timing down to an average of 3-4 days, it remains incredibly difficult to find options for rapid tests or reliably faster turnarounds. (more…)