Brazos County Health District says some COVID-19 testing locations violating governor’s orders by not sharing results

BRYAN, Texas (KBTX) - There are still questions surrounding several COVID testing sites in Bryan and College Station. On Thursday, KBTX reported that several Center for Covid Control locations weren’t sharing their results with the Brazos County Health District. Local health officials say these sites are violating Gov. Greg Abbott’s Executive Order.

Center for Covid Control testing locations have seen hundreds of people in recent days. They have a location on Woodville Road in Bryan and a very busy location at Southwest Parkway and Texas Avenue in College Station.

“It was busy. It was about an hour wait going through the line,” said Chuck Lane of College Station.

He stopped by the Texas Avenue and Southwest Parkway location to get tested Thursday. On Friday he saw the location was unexpectedly closed saying they will reopen Monday.

“They said it’d be a couple hours. Well that was yesterday around 1 o’clock. Ain’t got a result yet,” said Lane.

Employees at the centers couldn’t answer why they aren’t sharing test results with the health district but told KBTX it’s being looked into.

“We have been in contact with them. We reached out through their corporate line and that was a very long process to actually be able to speak to a human and we were never given a clear definition of why they decided not to report the cases to us,” said Mary Parrish with the Brazos County Health District.

Parrish says that information is critical to understand how COVID is moving through our community. Not reporting is also against the Governor’s orders.

“This is concerning because it does go against GA-38... It clearly states that anyone who wants to set up COVID testing has to report to the state and their health departments,” explained Parrish.

She said they are continuing to try to communicate with the company.

“We have been told that their IT Department is working with the State of Texas to get something set up so that way they can send results to the state. However there are other ways that they can securely send that data to us,” said Parrish. “We do have a private fax line that many healthcare providers utilize. That’s how we get most of our cases in and they have just decided not to use that feature,” Parrish said.

Health officials say you should be careful what information you share with testing centers that are new to the community. Center for Covid Control staff and their website say you only need to provide an ID and insurance card if you have one. They’ve been offering free testing in Brazos County since November.

“[I] don’t want to give them a bunch of information. I just wanted them to get my bare minimum,” said Lane, regarding his test.

Center for Covid Control’s website says PCR test results can take up to two days to get results back, while rapid tests take 15 minutes.

We’ve left multiple messages for Center for Covid Control both in person and their corporate contact to ask about their operations and not sharing results. We still haven’t heard back from management as of Friday afternoon.

Both State Representative Kyle Kacal and Rep. John Raney told us they are looking into the issues of pop-up testing locations after KBTX’s report on Thursday.

The Brazos County Health District has a list of COVID-19 testing locations here.

On Friday, USA Today published a story on their investigation on Center for Covid Control and talked to the Brazos County Health District about the problems being seen locally.

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