In May, county officials said more than $200 million of the aid money was going toward testing, protective equipment and related costs, while some of the remainder was being used to cover additional cleaning and sanitation, programs to feed people in need and health efforts for homeless and incarcerated people.

But in a Tuesday letter to county supervisors, Orange County’s Congressional delegation questioned how the board has spent most of the $554 million it received in federal coronavirus aid and referenced the “pervasive difficulty accessing tests.” On Monday, Irvine became the county’s first city to open a testing site for its own community after officials said residents had been asking for additional options to get tested.Ĭounty officials have said that while testing capacity was admittedly inadequate in the early weeks of the pandemic, it has improved significantly. Anaheim is providing the convention center site for free.Īnecdotally, stories of difficulty getting a COVID-19 test, particularly for people who may have been exposed to the virus but don’t feel sick or have symptoms, have been circulating in Orange County since the outbreak began. But people with health insurance are asked to call their provider first about getting a test before making an appointment with the county.Ĭounty and city officials could not immediately say how quickly test results would be returned or how much the program is expected to cost. The testing will either be billed to health insurers or covered by federal funding for the uninsured. Westminster-based 360 Clinic is the county’s health care partner for the convention center testing, which Lyster said will be contact-free: test center staff will hand people who drive up a swab so they can take a specimen from their nose, put it in a bag and hand it back to the worker. It will allow us to get back to reopening safely when the time is right.” The new site will allow many more people to get tested, Anaheim Mayor Harry Sidhu said at the Orange County Board of Supervisors’ Tuesday meeting, adding: “This will help us address a surge of cases in our community and across Orange County. A second location could open at the OC Fair & Event Center in a few weeks other specific sites have not been identified. The test site, which will be staged in a parking garage at the southwest corner of the city-owned convention center, is expected to start by handling 600 to 800 people per day and ramp up to a maximum capacity of 1,200 people a day within two weeks, Anaheim spokesman Mike Lyster said.Īnd the Convention Center is expected to be the first of several large-scale test sites around the county, officials said. The new test site is intended to test health care and nursing home workers, first responders, public employees, grocery and other essential workers, and will also be available for people with symptoms of COVID-19, county spokeswoman Molly Nichelson said. The ability to test Orange County residents for coronavirus infections will get a big boost on Wednesday, July 15, when the county opens a drive-through testing center at the Anaheim Convention Center.

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