State will stop paying for walk-up COVID testing at end of month

The state has decided to stop offering walk-up COVID-19 testing at Alaska’s larger airports, and to stop paying for similar free testing operations in communities statewide, including Wrangell, effective Jan. 31.

The SouthEast Alaska Regional Health Consortium will shut down its walk-up, no-appointment-needed free testing operation in Wrangell on Jan. 31 but will continue offering testing by appointment.

The change in testing comes as Wrangell is seeing the start of a post-holidays surge in infections, with 14 new cases among residents reported on Monday and Tuesday. Just five residents tested positive for the Coronavirus in December, the borough reported.

Statewide, the post-Christmas count was almost 3,700 cases Dec. 27 through Jan. 2, more than triple the numbers of a week earlier, according to the Alaska Department of Health and Social Services.

Nationwide, more than 1 million new cases were reported on Monday, 10 times the daily average for November, as the highly transmissible Omicron variant sweeps across the country.

While the state is scaling back is testing in Alaska, free at-home rapid tests are available at the fire hall in Wrangell, though they are generally less accurate than the molecular tests administered by health care providers and run through a lab.

As of Monday, Wrangell had more than 500 test kits available to hand out, said Capt. Dorianne Sprehe, of the Wrangell Fire Department.

An additional 1,500 kits are on order from the state, she said, though a delivery schedule for the rest of the boxes is uncertain. Each kit contains two tests.

The at-home test kits “will be depleted very quickly if folks use this method versus the free PCR (molecular) testing at SEARHC,” which will be available without an appointment through the end of the month, Sprehe advised.

“I am hopeful that we can make it through any ‘surge’ that we might see from holiday gathering and traveling” before the walk-up testing ends at SEARHC, she said.

Sprehe is asking residents to request only as many test kits as they need for their household. She advised people to call ahead to make sure she is at the fire hall before they come in to pick up the test boxes: Call 907-874-3223 between 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. weekdays, or email travel@wrangell.com to arrange a pickup time.

If an individual has symptoms of the highly contagious virus, however, they should schedule a test at SEARHC rather than rely on the at-home exam, Sprehe said.

With the end to walk-up testing at airports and other sites, the state plans to hand out free at-home rapid tests at airports in Anchorage, Fairbanks and Juneau, while travelers arriving at other Alaska airports will need to go elsewhere in those communities for tests, Alaska Department of Health and Social Services spokeswoman Elizabeth Manning said Dec. 30.

The state decided to stop the airport testing partially in response to the decreased popularity of the testing sites in recent months and increased popularity of rapid tests, Manning said.

SEARHC, which has provided tests under contract with the state since 2020, had been told last month by state officials that the testing contract would continue to June 30. However, SEARHC was notified by the state last week that the contract will end Jan. 31.

SEARHC last fall moved its testing site from the airport to a trailer in its parking lot, where it provided free testing for asymptomatic travelers and residents without an appointment, six days a week.

Although rapid tests are not as sensitive to detecting the Coronavirus, they’re quicker than molecular tests, which typically take at least a day or more for labs to process — even longer in communities that have to send out the tests for lab work.

The state-funded airport tests have identified approximately 6,000 COVID-19 cases across Alaska since June 2020, according to the health department.

SEARHC will offer COVID-19 testing by appointment at the Wrangell Medical Center — regardless of whether the individual has any symptoms of the Coronavirus. Call 907-874-7000 between 8 a.m. and 5 p.m. weekdays to schedule an appointment.

Individuals who have symptoms of COVID-19 or were in close contact with an infected individual are advised to immediately call SEARHC to schedule an appointment.

With the end of state funding for the tests, SEARHC will bill an individual’s insurer for the tests, said Alicia Gillen, executive assistant at the hospital. “For patients who do not have insurance or whose insurance does not cover the test, SEARHC is able to cover the cost,” Gillen said last week. “This may change in the future, depending on COVID funding.”