As COVID-19 cases and hospitalizations continue to surge in Delaware, at-home rapid tests have become a hot commodity. Supply chain shortages mean pharmacies are often out of stock, and places that require negative results for entry — like many schools and universities — aren’t providing the tests.
“There’s a tremendous need to distribute tests,” said New Castle County Executive Matt Meyer.
Meyer said that he, like many people, thought the state was “heading out of” the pandemic just a few weeks ago. But now, with the introduction of the highly transmissible omicron variant, COVID-19 has skyrocketed. Delaware recorded 2,860 new cases Friday, according to the Division of Public Health, and broke records with 698 hospitalizations on Friday.
These grim numbers — coupled with major testing supply chain shortages — inspired Meyer’s office to purchase and hand out 6,500 free rapid test kits Saturday morning. The event was set to begin at the New Castle County Government Center at 10 a.m., but cars began to line up almost four hours early.
Aundrea Almond, Meyer’s chief of staff, said that after her team received the test kits Thursday, they organized the handout as ”quickly as possible.”
“The test kits do us no good sitting on a shelf in our storage room,” she said.
With traffic beginning to back up onto Reads Way in both directions, Almond decided to start handing out test kits early. She and a team of volunteers ushered the first cars into the parking lot at 9 a.m., instructing them to form three lines. From there, volunteers gave each driver a box with two 15-minute rapid antigen tests and a note with guidance from the county executive’s office.
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District 7 Councilman George Smiley was one of the volunteers handing out tests. He said people seemed very appreciative, even when they had to wait in long lines of traffic.
“You can’t have enough help trying to get the testing into the hands of the public,” Smiley said.
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By 11 a.m., cars were backed up all the way onto I-95. Even with New Castle County police directing traffic at nearby intersections, drivers were stuck trying to exit the Government Center parking lot onto Airport Road.
Some volunteers feared the gridlock would prevent them from giving out all the tests by the event’s 2 p.m. end time. They began distributing the kits earlier in the line, and eventually decided to reconfigure the handout so cars wouldn’t be trapped in the parking lot.
Passing out tests on Reads Way helped speed the process along, but traffic remained stopped along Route 141 South all the way to Commons Boulevard.
Laura Freeman, whose daughter drove her to the giveaway, described the traffic as “hectic.” She also described some drivers as aggressive. One volunteer said she saw some early recipients drive up with bumpers damaged from accidents in the line.
Despite these issues, volunteer Jackie Herbert said overall the event is “helping the community come together during a crisis.”
Morale has been low, she said, and a lot of people aren’t taking COVID-19 as seriously as they should. So she came out Saturday morning to “do (her) part.”
“It’s cold out but I don’t even feel the cold because I’m taking pleasure and warmth in just doing what I’m doing by volunteering,” Herbert said.
Meyer said he plans to host more distribution events in the future as tests become available. He explained that in addition to getting vaccinated and wearing masks indoors, identifying positive cases in the community is key to stopping the spread of COVID-19.
“It takes all of us working together to get out of this,” Meyer said. “This is an extremely challenging time for us … so we want to make sure we’re all working together moving in the right direction.”
For more information about where to get vaccinated against COVID-19 in Delaware, visit visit de.gov/getmyvaccine.
Send story tips or ideas to Hannah Edelman at hedelman@delawareonline.com. For more reporting, follow them on Twitter at @h_edelman.
