SEARHC and fire department both providing free COVID-19 self-test kits

The SouthEast Alaska Regional Health Consortium is providing free COVID-19 at-home test kits on a first come, first served basis.

A Feb. 7 post on SEARHC's Facebook page said it is providing two boxes per household, but the Wrangell Medical Center pharmacy, where the test kits are being handed out, is not tracking who is asking or how many times.

"We're just asking people to be respectful so there's more for the community," Carly Allen, hospital administrator, said last Thursday.

After a post-holidays surge of 185 cases Dec. 30 to Jan. 30, Wrangell's count of new infections has fallen to 21 in the past two weeks, as of Monday.

Anyone feeling ill or anyone who has been exposed to the Coronavirus should stay home and call SEARHC for a scheduled test. Wrangell Medical Center is no longer offering walk-up testing at the entrance to the hospital. That state-funded program ended Jan. 31, not only in Wrangell but across Alaska. For the scheduled testing, SEARHC will bill an individual's insurer first and cover the shortfall if insurance doesn't fully cover the cost of testing.

Allen said the hospital has been handing out at-home test kits for a week or two. "We didn't get a lot of them, because the city has a large quantity of test kits," she said.

Separate from its own supply of government-provided test kits, Wrangell Medical Center helped the fire department get set up in December when the emergency operations center first handed out tests, Wrangell Fire Department Capt. Dorianne Sprehe said last Thursday.

The fire department now orders all of its tests from the state warehouse in Anchorage, under the Department of Health and Social Services, she said.

The fire department received an additional 230 boxes of at-home test kits last Thursday from the state. The purple-and-white boxes are branded CareStart COVID-19 Antigen Home Test. The borough previously received two other brands of test kits, but they are all similar and each box contains two self-swab tests.

Individuals should call the fire hall at 907-874-3223 to arrange a pickup of the kits for their household.

In the meantime, Allen said Wrangell Medical Center is continuing to reduce its state-contracted traveler nursing staff. "I think there might be a couple of them left through the month of February," Allen said.

The traveling nurses were helping backfill staffing gaps, which have been filled, she said. "It's not an issue with them departing on their schedule."

The state has signed contracts totaling almost $143 million with Atlanta-based DLH Holdings, a health industry solution and staffing company, to provide personnel for hospitals, schools and clinics across Alaska.

The state's original contract covered 90 days October to December. The state later extended the contract through January, then again through March 20 - though for a much smaller number of traveler health care staff than the 470 positions in the original contract last fall.