Thread by @THECITYNY

1/ The majority of NYC public school students are expected to begin school next month.

Despite @NYCSchools’ guidance on reopening safely, COVID testing for limited-English proficiency families may prove to be complicated.

2/ Legally, patients have a right to translation services in health care.

@NYCHealthSystem claims to offer them at its coronavirus testing sites in more than 200 languages via designated translator phones.

But our reporting found that that’s not always the case.

3/ Several staff told THE CITY that their testing sites either had no working phones or they had never had access to one.

One site in Woodside sent most of its phones to another in Flushing that needed them more, an employee said.

4/ Employees described being “at the mercy” of bilingual staff, or else having to learn basic phrases on their own.

Front desk staff and nurses alike reported using Google Translate to communicate with patients.

5/ Sometimes, errors were made when registering patients. Some did not receive discharge instructions in their native language.

If an error was not caught in time, patients could not access their test results. They had to get tested again.

6/ As THE CITY previously reported, language was a barrier to some residents obtaining COVID tests in Sunset Park, Brooklyn.

Much is now riding on @NYCHealthSystem to facilitate easy access to testing ahead of schools reopening.

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7/ “You can’t just go in and swab; you have to be able to speak,” a nurse at a @NYCHealthSystem testing site said.

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