Mad Dash Materializes For Covid Tests

Desperate Amazon workers, exposed family members, and hundreds of others jammed the streets outside a shuttered Hamden High School late Tuesday afternoon in hopes of getting their hands on the last batch for now of town-provided at-home Covid-19 tests.

The 1,600 available tests were gone halfway through the planned three-hour giveaway.

Pablo Colon was one of the hundreds who planned ahead in hopes of finishing first in the race for tests. He left home with daughter Angelica in tow on Tuesday thinking he’d arrive at the high school 20 minutes before the rest of the crowd. Instead, he found himself trapped for more than an hour behind a CT Transit bus. 

He finally parked at the Hamden plaza and walked over to the high school to pick up the goods.

“People desperately want these kits,” observed one of the event’s organizers.

After the high school closed its doors Tuesday due to Omicron-related staff shortages, volunteers took to the parking lot that same evening to distribute the final 1,600 self-administered test kits out of 9,216 allotted to the 60,000-person town by the state this past week. 

Hamden, like all other Connecticut municipalities, has been scrambling to get tests and masks to those who need them most amid news that the statewide positivity rate has surged above 20 percent.

Between Monday and Tuesday, the town — including CERT (Community Emergency Response Team) volunteers, police, firefighters, and Mayor Lauren Garrett — handed out tests and masks at six different sites: Hamden High School, Hamden Middle School, Keefe Community Center, Spring Glen Church, Mt. Calvary Revival Center, and Breakthrough Church. 

Additional tests — about another 1,600 of the 9,200 total — have gone to Hamden public schools, police and fire departments, public works, the library, elderly services, QVHD, the government center, community and youth centers, and affordable housing complexes around town. 

Hamden is expected to get another shipment of tests from the state on Wednesday, but it is unclear how many the town will actually receive.

Garrett’s administration waited to announce the location of Tuesday’s sixth and final event until one hour before its 4 p.m. start time in hopes of avoiding the traffic back-up. When Chief of Staff Sean Grace arrived at the high school at 3:10, just ten minutes after robocall messages were left on residents’ phones directing them to the school, a line of cars had already formed around the building. 

Over the course of the hour, miles of traffic built up along Dixwell Avenue and into adjacent neighborhoods.

The long lines ​“speak to the level of anxiety out there,” Grace said.

Why bother with such a long wait for just two home tests? Colon, a building contractor, contracting Covid roughly one month ago. Even back then, he had struggled to book an appointment at CVS for a PCR test. 

If he were to become infected a second time or if his wife caught the illness, he said, the pair would need to test negative promptly in order to get back to their jobs and support their family.

Meanwhile, Angelica was on her second day off from Eli Whitney Technical High School, a state-run school based in Hamden that dismissed early Monday morning and will stay shut through at least Wednesday due to teachers calling out of work.

Without the possibility of remote schooling — and with the added dread of having to complete more classes at the end of the year — Angelica said she’s ​“just hanging in there” until she can go back to Eli Whitney. However, she added that she predicts the entire week will ultimately be called off. 

As Angelica lamented the temporary shuttering of her school, 21-year-old Tj Sinclair was returning to his alma mater to pick up tests. 

Days after his car broke down and his mother tested positive, Sinclair outpaced the stream of impatient drivers bordering the Hamden Plaza in an effort to pick up two tests for himself and his father. Though Sinclair had tested negative once before, he was concerned that he and his dad would get sick trying to quarantine in the same house as his mom.

His father works from home. His mom, a certified nurse assistant, easily got time off to recuperate. But Sinclair works for Amazon. ​“They’re so backed up with calls,” he said, shaking his head, that he hasn’t even been able to get through to his boss to communicate his current situation and potential exposure.

Upon finally reaching the tables of masks and tests, he saw a familiar face from his days at Hamden High: A veteran paraprofessional named Kathy, dressed in a CERT suit and running cardboard kits to vehicle windows.

“How are you doing?” Kathy asked Sinclair she spotted him.

“Not so well,” he responded with a sigh.

Kathy, who declined to share her last name, said that she joined CERT two years ago, around the start of the pandemic. While others were losing or quitting their jobs, my job was safe,” she said. ​“So, I felt like I needed to help other people because I was fortunate.”

Just because her job has remained secure, however, does not mean that it is easy or safe. On Monday, she joined administrators in jumping around classrooms to keep kids in school while teachers called in sick — only for the school to be closed the next day due to an additional ten staff calling out. 

She said the lesson she has taken away from the past couple of years is that ​“We just all have to work together as a team.”

Eric Providence, whose son and wife had tested positive a few days prior after a holiday trip to a relative’s home, reiterated Kathy’s message.

“It’s a beautiful thing,” he said of the work individuals like Kathy take on in hopes of caring for their community.

He discovered the distribution site on his way home from work in Derby; he had stayed late to cover a shift for a friend on her birthday and discovered the scene upon arriving back in Hamden. It took him ​“45 minutes” just to get half a mile from the highway to the nearby high school in order to pick up some masks and tests for his family.

“It’s Tuesday night, but it’s like a club is going on somewhere,” he said. 

Stopping for tests despite the crowds was one more step he figured he could take to monitor and mitigate spread within and outside his home. Both Providence and his son are asthmatic.

Weeks ago, Providence purchased ten take-home tests, or five kits priced at “$25 a pop.” Now, he can’t find tests anywhere — and needs to test himself, his daughter, and his symptomatic family members. 

“I tell him, you gotta protect yourself,” Providence said of his son. ​“I keep my feet covered, wear appropriate clothing, and listen to the news.”

Fortunately, despite his asthma, Providence’s vaccinated son seems to be doing okay. ​“I see him running back and forth to the fridge,” Providence joked.

Still, Providence said, the goal is not just to ​“protect yourself,” but to ​“protect your people,” — including those who are immunocompromised.

Mayor Garrett said the town will continue working to protect its residents by obtaining more tests and continuing to distribute them over the coming weeks alongside N95 masks.

On Tuesday, residents were told that supplies would be available between 4 p.m. and 7 p.m., but 1,600 tests were gone in half that time. So, it’s safe to say that there are many more Hamdenites who will eagerly line up once again to take advantage of any newly acquired resources.

Other initiatives include a Thursday grocery distribution hosted by the town and Connecticut Foodshare outside of the Hamden Middle School; Vaccine and booster clinics are planned through January in community spaces like the Keefe Center. Find out more about those events at the town’s Facebook page here.

In the even more immediate future, Garrett noted, eyeing the stacks on stacks of cardboard boxes that once carried Covid tests, ​“There’s a lot of recycling to do.”