TACOMA, Wash — One week after the Tacoma-Pierce County Department of Health wrapped up a five-day COVID-19 drive-through testing event at the Tacoma Dome, city officials said between 1,000 and 1,500 unused surplus tests remained in storage at the health department, despite a nationwide shortage of the tests.
During the event, 996 tests were used, according to Edie Jeffers, a spokesperson with the Tacoma-Pierce County Department of Health. But Jeffers said at least 1,000 unused tests were left over from the event.
Jeffers said since the tests belong to FEMA, the health department did not have the authority to decide how they would be used.
"We have informed FEMA of the remaining tests, and we are waiting for further direction,” Jeffers said in an email Wednesday morning.
By Wednesday afternoon, a spokesperson with FEMA’s Washington office released a statement to KING 5 saying, “The federal government is not seeking return of supplies…including PPE and test kits, so it is up to the state and locals to allocate and use [the tests] as they see fit.”
Tacoma City Councilman Robert Thoms said the confusion over the kits showed a lack of strategy in the federal government’s handling of the pandemic but added: “I don’t want to place blame.”
Thoms said city officials, including Tacoma’s mayor, sent FEMA a letter demanding direction on who has authority to dispatch the tests. Thoms said he had not heard the official word from FEMA on who has the authority over the testing kits until a KING 5 reporter read FEMA's statement to him.
"We are going to redeploy those tests. Now it’s just a matter of calling up and saying, 'Well, FEMA just told the news that it’s us,'" he said. “I appreciate that clarity. I would’ve just as soon had that clarity last week.”
Jeffers said FEMA’s statement cleared health department officials to begin planning “smaller-scale community-based testing” rather than large drive-through testing events like the one at the Tacoma Dome.
“We’ll work with existing partners and leverage health care infrastructure to provide more testing to people who need it,” she said.