‘Giving up on the system’: Beaufort Co. woman waits 16 days on coronavirus test result
For 21 days Diana Winebarger did not know whether she could be spreading the virus that had ripped through the country, killing thousands, many her age.
The 73-year-old Harbor Island resident recalled that her illness began with a splitting headache that woke her up in the middle of the night. It was March 13. Only 13 South Carolinians had tested positive for COVID-19.
The next day, Saturday, she felt worse, dizzy. The first cases were announced in Beaufort County.
She didn’t improve on Sunday. By Monday, Winebarger had developed a fever that peaked at over 100 degrees. She lacked an appetite and strained to breathe. “It felt like hundreds of people were sitting on my chest,” she said.
Fear gripped her.
Winebarger lives with her husband, Herb, who suffers from dementia and seizures, and their Yorkshire terrier, Charlie. Before all this, she was healthy and active, took no medications and was a passionate caregiver. But she had lived in their condo, 15 miles east of Beaufort, for less than a year. She had no doctor in the area.
She called the nearest hospital, Beaufort Memorial, and was asked to contact the facilities’ clinic, across the street. She did, leaving a message with her name, birth date and symptoms.
Winebarger waited two days. Nothing. (Beaufort Memorial couldn’t locate Winebarger’s call. A spokesperson said it is not the hospital’s practice to ignore patient messages and that it established a dedicated call center for its clinic at the end of March due to increased demand.)
On Wednesday, March 18, her symptoms persisted, so she sought care elsewhere.
That day, she was tested for COVID-19 and joined hundreds of others across the state caught in limbo, entering the health system at a time when some labs were struggling to clear the backlog of testing kits flooding their facilities.
Now, state health officials estimate 86% of coronavirus cases in Beaufort County are undiagnosed. Given how stretched resources are, not everyone should be tested, they have said. Those who are tested must wait in isolation for their results.
Diana Winebarger waited 16 days. The experience shook her. “I can’t be the only one struggling with this issue,” she said.
MARCH 18 - THE TEST
When Winebarger called that Wednesday morning, Lowcountry Urgent Care said medical workers would see her. When she pulled up, a nurse gave her a mask, gloves and paperwork to fill out in the car.
She was tested for the flu, but the results were negative. After examining her and listening to a description of her symptoms, a doctor said she should be tested for the coronavirus.
The clinic’s staff swabbed her nostril around 1 p.m. “You’ll have results in three days. And it will be us that calls you, or it will be the CDC,” she remembers the doctor saying.
“That was their first mistake,” she said.
MARCH 21 - DAY THREE
Winebarger stayed inside, following the recommendations from the doctor she had seen and nearly every public health official in the country.
The logistics of her day-to-day meant small exceptions to her quarantine, she said. She had to take Charlie out to relieve himself because her husband’s condition limited his ability to do so. Winebarger took care to touch nothing, exiting the house in the early morning and late at night, between 10 p.m. and 1 a.m. with the Yorkie for just several minutes, when “not a soul was around,” she said.
On the Saturday after she had been tested, the water service to Winebarger’s condo stopped running. Her husband, still showing no symptoms, had gone out for some fresh air. Alone, she stepped outside, hoping to figure out what was going on.
Fifteen feet away, down two flights of steps, was a neighbor. “Please don’t come any closer,” she called out, asking about the water. “I’m ill and have been tested,” she said.
She worried about causing a panic in her little community. But the interaction was enough. “The word spread like wildfire,” she said.
MARCH 23 - DAY FIVE
That Monday, Winebarger called the urgent care. “Let me see if we can call to see what’s going on with your results,” a receptionist told her.
That afternoon, an employee from the urgent care center called back. Winebarger had little energy and struggled to talk. “It just was raging through my chest and my head,” she said. She had lost her sense of smell.
The test was still pending, the employee told her.
COVID-19 test kits were being processed at a state laboratory, which would see a backlog of 1,600 tests in the coming days, and at private labs, where turnaround times varied. Some of South Carolina’s hospitals had begun to shift testing in-house in an effort to speed up wait times, which can sideline EMS and health care workers for days if they are exposed and must stay home to wait for a test result.
That phone conversation was the “last time I was ever able to call a live person,” she said. The Lowcountry Urgent Care location she had visited, on Robert Smalls Parkway in Beaufort, closed.
But Winebarger didn’t know that. Over the next week, she called again and again, leaving at least seven messages. “Somebody help me, has my sample been lost?” she asked in one.
MARCH 25 TO APRIL 1 - WEEK 2
After a full week of waiting, Winebarger began to turn elsewhere for help. She was still feverish, her symptoms a little better but still coming and going each day.
She called the S.C. Department of Health and Environmental Control, the agency heading off the state’s response to the outbreak. “I’m not sure we can do anything to help you,” she was told. The results had to come from the site she was tested.
Desperate, she left a message with the local office of U.S. Rep. Joe Cunningham, D-SC, who tested positive himself that week. Winebarger was surprised when a number with a 202 area code called her back: one of Cunningham’s aides in Washington D.C.
The aide promised to help, also calling the urgent care center and DHEC. No luck. Winebarger finally filed a complaint with the state about the facility that had seen her. She still hasn’t heard back.
Winebarger even called the CDC, remembering what the doctor had told her and waiting on hold for an hour.
On March 30, an 81-year-old Beaufort man became the first area resident to die after being infected by COVID-19. The county’s cases jumped 50% in a day.
Winebarger has no family in the area to help with care. Some neighbors brought food for her and Herb, checking in on her as the days stretched to weeks.
But she also felt watched.
Twice while out late at night with Charlie, Winebarger says a resident called the community’s security. The guard was polite, asking Winebarger to identify herself by her condo number. “Have you gotten test results yet?” the guard asked from a distance on the quiet street.
“There are no results so far,” she said.
On March 31, the homeowner association board of her condo sent out a notice to members. It was short, warning residents of a property owner who “has not received the test results yet but has not totally quarantined themselves to their condo unit either.”
The email was curt, and a far cry from the all-out lockdown another Beaufort County private community, Haig Point on Daufuskie Island, put in place after a resident was tested for the virus.
Harbor Island Manager Don Woelke said homeowners called him offering to prepare meals or support Winebarger in other ways. He texted her every day, checking in about test results, and he also placed calls to DHEC. “I did nothing except try to help her,” he said.
Winebarger acknowledges the support friends gave her. But she also says she felt isolated, her privacy violated. “We were treated like lepers,” she said, insisting she took great care to avoid touching surfaces and avoiding other people in what she says was a very limited time she was outside with her dog.
APRIL 3 - DAY 16
Three weeks after beginning to feel sick and 16 days after her visit to the urgent care center, Winebarger’s fever still regularly rose above 100 degrees.
According to CDC guidance, she had two ways out of the nightmare she was living: a negative test result or a significant lapse in her fever. “I just gave up,” she said. She contacted the Island Packet and Beaufort Gazette because she wanted others in her position to know they weren’t alone, she said.
“This just shows that our health care system is failing miserably when it really gets serious,” she said.
The newspapers located a phone number for a second local Lowcountry Urgent Care location, which hadn’t been closed. On April 3, Winebarger called. Her result had come in several days earlier, on March 30, she was told.
It was negative.
Kelsey Kirk, district manager for the chain of urgent care centers, said the facilities had been sending samples to a Quest Diagnostics lab. “They were backlogged 10 to 14 days to get results back,” she said.
On March 25, Quest had 160,000 tests waiting to be tested, the company said in a new release. It has since cut that backlog in half.
Kirk said only two people were tested for COVID-19 at the site where Winebarger was examined. Both were notified of their results, she said. Since then, Lowcountry Urgent Care has changed to a different lab, which is returning tests within 48 hours.
“It is unfortunate that it took that long,” she said.
The same day a reporter spoke with Kirk, Winebarger says the clinic called to ensure she had her test result.
Winebarger’s experience is not unique. Testing time at private labs “varies greatly,” said Nick Davidson, DHEC’s acting director of public health, on a Wednesday press call. The agency is still seeing delays of three to 11 days, he said.
Some hospital systems and DHEC’s own lab are currently able to process testing kits much more quickly.
The lack of reliable data on who has the coronavirus hinders epidemiologists’ ability to model the virus’ spread, the newspapers reported last week. While Beaufort County has 191 documented positive cases as of Saturday, it likely has over 1,300 COVID-19 infections, according to state health officials’ estimates.
The experience blindsided Winebarger. She knows others in her place are “giving up on the system,” breaking their quarantine entirely.
“I know that we have to take action,” she said.
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