Staffing shortage closes Wichita State’s booming drive-thru COVID testing operation
Staffing shortages have forced Wichita State’s booming COVID-19 testing site to close its drive-thru sampling, the university said in a news release Wednesday.
The staffing shortages are due to illness.
“It is important to note that it has nothing to do with their work at the lab — it’s because of the current state of the pandemic in our community,” Wichita State spokesperson Lainie Mazzullo-Hart said in an email.
Wichita hospital officials, who have painted a bleak picture with full beds and a record number of COVID patients, have also reported massive staffing shortages because of illness.
The molecular diagnostics lab at 4174 S. Oliver (Building 174H) will still take drop-off COVID-19 tests done at one of the 600-plus sites in the community. Updates about when the lab will reopen to drive-thru testing will be posted on its web site.
“We are short staffed at the moment and have to make a decision as to what we need to prioritize,” Tonya Witherspoon, executive director of the diagnostics lab, said in the release. “The No. 1 thing we have to focus on right now is processing thousands of tests every day for our health care workers and collection partners while continuing to provide 24-hour turnaround test results.”
The lab and Sedgwick County’s primary testing site at 4415 E. East Harry have seen long lines as the spread of COVID has snowballed.
Dr. Sam Antonios, Ascension Via Christi chief clinical officer, said Wednesday that the healthcare system has a record number of COVID-19 patients. On Tuesday, he told Wichita council members the surge of cases hasn’t peaked yet.
“It will accelerate here for the next few weeks,” he said.
Last week in the Wichita area, 6,700 people tested positive for COVID-19, Sedgwick County Health Officer Dr. Garold Minns said. That’s up from about 1,600 two weeks earlier.
“This virus has just taken over,” Minns said. “It has massively increased. That’s the highest number of cases we’ve had a week since this whole thing started.”
Health officials say vaccines, masks, social distancing and testing are some of the greatest tools to help slow the spread of the virus.
Sedgwick County’s vaccination rate has seemingly stalled at 50%, Minns said, which is well below state and national averages and not enough to reach the herd immunity health officials had hoped for early on. Last week, Minns said “hardly anyone in any of the communities across the state is masking, hardy anyone is doing social distancing . . . there’s no attempt by businesses to keep the checkout stands distanced.”
Testing in Wichita will be affected by the lab’s closure.
“Together as a community, we can work effectively to combat this surge and keep our families healthy,” Witherspoon says.
A list of other testing options can be found here.
This story was originally published January 12, 2022 at 10:53 AM.