The Pima County Board of Supervisors will consider expending $3 million in federal COVID-19 relief dollars to continue COVID-19 testing as current funding for the county-sponsored program is set to run out in early December.
County administration will ask the supervisors at their Dec. 7 meeting to earmark money from the American Rescue Plan Act, or ARPA, to not only continue the testing program but double its capacity.
“We will run out of state money to conduct COVID testing as of December. The question becomes, what do we do after that? And is testing still needed?” said Dr. Francisco Garcia, the county’s chief medical officer. “Clearly, given the surge that we are living through at this moment, we are continuing to need those kinds of resources.”
The county’s currently in a state of high COVID-19 transmission, which the CDC classifies as more than 100 new cases per 100,000 of the population in the last seven days. This figure was 295 per 100,000 in the county on Dec. 3, according to CDC data.
While COVID tests are readily available through pharmacies and medical providers, Pima County has made expanding testing options through its fixed and mobile testing sites a key pillar of its response to the pandemic and has provided more than 2.2 million free COVID-19 tests.
“Most counties in the state of Arizona aren’t investing a lot of their own resources in testing. For us, we really think that this is a key strategy,” Garcia said.
Pima County was experiencing a testing positivity rate of nearly 8% on Dec. 3, according to the state health department. That number, which depicts the rate of positive cases out of all COVID-19 tests reported in the county, becomes more accurate with a larger denominator of tests performed.
But providing that resource comes at a cost to the county, which is spending about $160,000 a week on its testing sites. As of Dec. 1, the county’s spent more than $44 million on testing, mainly using federal COVID dollars to reimburse the cost, according to data from the county.
With those funds now running dry, the county’s supervisors will be asked to dedicate $3 million in ARPA contingency funds set aside in the plan for unforeseen needs. The county received more than $203 million total in the federal relief package, with about $10 million in contingency dollars, according to Deputy County Administrator Jan Lesher.
Although the current rate of tests performed in the county is considered adequate — at more than 1,500 tests a day — “the substantial gradual increase in test positivity beyond the 3% threshold suggests that a substantial increase in testing is justified,” Lesher wrote in a memo to the board.
The $3 million influx would double available tests to 3,000 a day at a new weekly cost of about $200,000, which would fund the program for 15 weeks if the board approves the allocation. The funds would also allow the county to expand the operating hours of its current testing sites.
“Ultimately, we need to sort of have the best understanding of how this is evolving,” Garcia said. “Certainly in this current surge, we’re really challenged to really figure out how to make the most out of it. I think the testing information is helping us add a lot to that information.”
Lesher hopes the need for testing will subside by the time the $3 million runs out, but told the board in a memo that money may need to be built into the health department’s budget to fund testing long-term.
“The health department has received nonstop support since the pandemic began, and since that time, the amount of county investment in the health department has grown tremendously and appropriately, because that’s the part of our system that is most impacted and has the most impact on the pandemic,” Garcia said. “I think you will continue to see our investment in that area, and the board will need to weigh in on what the right amount of support is.”
