Thread by @sarahkliff

Last month, my son's daycare had a coronavirus outbreak.

Another student in his class was positive. Then, my son vomited. I wanted to get him a COVID test.

Even living in a big city with dozens of testing sites, it wasn't easy.

A thread (1/11).

I first thought I'd go to the Walgreens a few blocks away — but turns out, they only test adults.

Next idea: D.C.'s free testing sites. There are lots of them! But turns out they only test kids over 6. (2/11)

I wanted to use a drive-up site to minimize risk. But nearly all I researched — public, private, at urgent cares, at pharmacies — wouldn't see kids.

Finally, I had a stroke of luck - another parent knew of an urgent care that would do drive-up pediatric testing! (3/11)

...Except, they only had testing appointments available at a location 45 minutes away in Virginia. After some begging and pleading, I was able to get one in D.C.

All the research and phone calls took up a half-day (when, obviously, I had no childcare and my job to do). (4/11)

It turns out, my experience isn't unique — just at the moment that the country is opening schools, there is a huge dearth of coronavirus testing for kids.

Public and private test sites have placed seemingly arbitrary age minimums for testing (5/11)

When I started looking into this as a reporter, I found lots of parents in similar situations. They had to call multiple hospitals, test sites, and doctor offices. Some gave up and never got their kids tested (6/11)

Why won't testing sites see kids? I heard lots of reasons:
—They don't have pediatric nurses
—Some tests aren't approved for pediatric use
—Most kids have insurance (through CHIP), so they should get tested at the pediatrician.
—Kids are squirmy (true but!)

(7/11)

Why does this matter? There's the obvious answer: we might miss cases of coronavirus if kids can't tested, and that may contribute to the disease's further spread (8/11)

It's also another huge burden on working parents: many childcare centers and schools require symptomatic kids to test negative or isolate for 2 weeks.

Can't get your kid tested? That means two weeks without childcare. (9/11)

More broadly, a lack of pediatric testing hampers our ability to understand how the disease spreads among children and effects them. As one researcher said, it's making kids a COVID "blind spot." (10/11)

Not testing kids may have worked okay when schools and childcare centers were closed earlier in the pandemic. But now, it could become yet another bottleneck for our testing capacity. (11/11)

Read more from me and @sangerkatz in today's @nytimes: nytimes.com/2020/09/08/ups…

Two small addendums!

— My son was fine and ultimately tested negative.

— Many drive-ups won't test toddlers but, in my experience, it's an *excellent* setting for testing young kids — they're restrained in a car seat! Harder to protest!

(12/11)