Coronavirus: Lack of access to tests hampers care in Tallahassee's poorer neighborhoods

When Jewel Brown's 11-year-old daughter Jaaliyah had a 103-degree fever, she worried and took her to the hospital. There, they were told the child couldn’t get tested for COVID-19 unless she had a doctor’s referral.

Moreover, Brown has an underlying autoimmune disease. She later got sick, too.

They live in the underserved Frenchtown neighborhood, where local leaders are concerned about disparities amid coronavirus cases. 

And those disparities are not just in the ZIP codes with spikes in coronavirus cases, like 32304, but in other high-poverty areas where cases go unreported. A scarcity in cases reported could signal a significant lack of access to tests.

A walk-up testing site was launched this weekend at Florida A&M’s Bragg Stadium to help correct that and test south side residents, with help from the Florida Department of Health and Bond Community Health Center. So far, more than 500 people have been tested at the site, according to FAMU.

Due to a scarcity of test kits, a doctor’s referral is required to get tested at the city’s drive-through site at Northwood Centre off Monroe Street. Primary care doctors determine whether a patient should be tested based on federal criteria.

Lacking access to a primary doctor — like Jaaliyah, whose pediatrician was not seeing patients — or not having a car has been has prevented access to tests so far.

The result, local experts say, is cases flying under the radar.

“In medicine, we say you cannot come up with a diagnosis for something you’re not looking for,” said Bond Community Health’s CEO Dr. Temple Robinson. “If you don’t look, you don’t know what the positivity rate is. If you don’t test them, you don’t know who is positive, who’s not and where you need to direct your health resources.”

Many residents of Tallahassee’s south side and other underserved areas like the Bond neighborhood frequent low-income clinics that lack tests kits. 

As of last week, Bond's clinic had a mere four test kits. That was after running out of the five test kits the state provided the clinic weeks ago.

A majority-black ZIP code of Tallahassee’s south side, 32305, had only 8 positive cases so far. Of the 20,600 people who live in that ZIP code, which encompasses the southernmost part of Leon County and Woodville, 58 percent are black and about a quarter of people live below the poverty line, according to Census figures.

"Those who are already suffering … have less capacity to fight this pandemic," Leon County Commissioner Bill Proctor said. "One of the criteria has exceeded quite a few people in this community. If you don’t have a car, you’re not getting tested ... a lot of people in 32305 ride the bus or they ride bicycles or they walk." 

On the flip side, Leon’s ZIP codes with the most coronavirus cases are 32304, 32303 and 32308, according to the state. Each are majority-white.

Almost 60 percent of residents at a facility for adults with disabilities, the Tallahassee Developmental Center off Appleyard Drive in 32304, have tested positive for the coronavirus. That’s 34 residents, more than half of 32304’s 58 cases. Ten of those residents are black, 23 are white and 1 is Hispanic.

The state records patients per ZIP code of residence, not where they contracted it or where it was diagnosed. So although a third of TDC’s staff have contracted the virus, they aren’t counted among 32304’s cases unless they also live in the ZIP code.

“We are very focused on the health and safety of our residents right now and do not have time to examine our personnel files for this information,” said Kim Faustin, COO of the center, when asked about infected staff’s race and residence.

It’s unclear where the rest of 32304’s cases — 24 — come from, given limited information from the state.

Family life in 32304 is markedly impoverished: Of its 16,000-some households, more than 9,000 households are below the poverty level.

Along with a student population, 32304 is also scattered with several impoverished neighborhoods, including public housing and several trailer park neighborhoods located past the university. Fifty-four percent live below poverty.

And one of 32303's cases could have been Jaaliyah and her mother, but since they weren't tested, that's unclear.

"Every time I turn around I hear another star got tested — and it's like if you're not somebody of importance, my daughter is on Medicaid, it's like, what do you do when you're not somebody important?" Jewel Brown said.

She didn't have a thermometer or cleaning supplies, so the neighborhood's Revitalization Council helped.

"People don't have money to do all that. I only get so much money to pay my rent and my lights," Brown said. "My church friends left supplies at my front door. If I didn't have that, I would've been in real trouble."

About a fifth of 32303’s 50,000 residents live below the poverty level. In 32308, that figure is 10%. 

Throughout Leon County, 84 of COVID-19 patients are black, and 87 are white, the state reports.

While the state tracks and releases the race of each coronavirus patient in Leon County and the number of coronavirus cases per ZIP code, it doesn’t release the race of patients per ZIP code.

And ZIP codes with 5 or less patients are suppressed by the state, citing federal patient privacy laws, so the exact amount can’t be seen.

But 58% of 32304’s total population is white, 36% is black — including mixed-black — and the remaining 6% are Hispanic, Asian or another minority.

In nearby 32303, the majority of residents are white, while 37% are black. Just shy of three quarters in 32308 are white, and the remaining quarter is black or another minority.

Certain Census tracts and block groups — both geographic units much smaller than a ZIP code — have higher rates of poverty and higher concentrations of racial groups, but the state’s COVID-19 tracking dashboard does not include data at the tract- or block-group level.

Throughout poor rural North Florida communities, COVID-19 tests have also been scant: Neighboring Liberty County, where a quarter live in poverty, was the last of Florida’s 67 counties to detect a COVID-19 case.

Amid a scarcity in supplies, the underfunded nonprofit that runs Liberty County’s testing site also runs clinics and sites throughout the Big Bend and Panhandle. Each day, it’s had to ration out tests to each site from Panama City to Bristol.