I went to a Department of Public Health drive-thru site. No note from the doctor, no appointment, no reason necessary, no bathroom! It was a 3-hour car line and I got there before they opened. Got my test, though, and a few days later a negative result.

The upcoming holiday was said to overwhelm the testing sites this week....hopeful families wanting to safely get together on Thanksgiving. We didn't try, we're staying home. And not happily, but trying to do our part.

Local news had a picture of college students (in their cars), line backed up onto the roadway for over a mile, to get a Covid test before thanksgiving break. A few times this summer our city advertised a testing event, free until supplies ran out. Way too little. *Sigh* hopefully a lesson learned for the next pandemic.

Here, the drive-thru does ask why your getting tested. For work? Symptoms?

We had to log in online. Register to get a number. Then go to the site, sit in line with other cars. Then pull around the ones that didn't already register to get their number. Then get in THAT line. It was about 30 minutes. My husbands results were available online in 3 days. Mine never showed up. I called, asked to have my results emailed OR posted online. They said they DON'T DO THAT......? Yes you do. I took the test a 2nd time....4 days ago.....nothing.....yet. Maybe they're just behind.

We had to wait for 2 days before we could be tested locally. Got our results within 36 hours via email.

It was a bit of a wait.... while we were seated in our car. Maybe 30 minutes.

Our county offers drive through testing at numerous locations. No doctor’s orders required.

It is extremely easy to get a Covid test without a doctor's order in my area.- county drive ups, pop up testing at various locations weekly, CVS, and some urgent cares all do testing with results in 1-7 days depending on location. There seems to be a lot of disparity in availability and convenience depending the locale.

It's ridiculous that there are 50 different protocols for dealing with this public health crisis, and no leadership from the federal government to help the citizens of this nation.

That sounds like such an ordeal. Have you called your Public health department to see if they have any test sites? Our Health department has an online list of where to go for testing.

My County Health department has mobile testing available. Two weeks ago they came to my over 55 community for free testing for anyone who wanted one. I was there at 10 am and received notification around 11 pm by email that DH and I were negative. Neither of us have any symptoms and have been very careful about wearing masks and keeping our distance. It was simple, no prescription required. I had to fill a small tube with saliva, it reminded me of the Ancestry DNA test kits. It took about 15 minutes from filling out the paperwork to leaving.

The county will even mail a free testing kit to your home - the only requirement is that you have symptoms. The turn around time is 24-28 hours.

Sorry it was such a hassle to get a test. I know in KY and TN there are covid 19 testing hotlines. KY has a website also that lists all the current testing sites available. The longest it has taken me to get a test is 3 days, I think. I do think it's going to get worse as more people get sick.

This is what Federal leadership on the pandemic would have/should have prevented. Thank goodness for the Virginia Department of Health and our Governor who is an M.D. for providing free COVID testing clinics. I was able to pre-register for a half-hour time slot and drive through and get tested, no cost, no questions about why. And I think back to the promises our federal leadership made on March 13 about testing.

Last month my sister and her husband were going to Aruba. A requirement was that they had to have a negative covid test within 72 hrs of boarding the plane. She was having a terrible time finding a place that could meet the criteria. I happened to see a news article about drive up testing just over the state line in NY with results in 2 hrs. and that worked for them.

The test kits are distributed to the states, and each state is in charge of how they are distributed. It sounds like the system is overwhelmed by so many people having tests. My sister went to see her doctor, doctor wouldn't see her because she had a symptom of CoVid-19, so she had to be tested, came back negative. Less than a week later she went to go to an urgent treatment type place for something , tested again, negative again. A couple of weeks later she had emergency surgery for a ruptured appendix, and I'm sure she was tested again, which must have been negative., Then they sent her to rehab for a week or two, because she's too weak and sick to go home, and also, has to have antibiotic injections into a port several times a day. She will probably be tested again before she goes home.

I'm not sure what else the federal government can do that they aren't doing , They're already pumping out tests and distributing them as fast as anyone possibly could, and coming up with a vaccine in record time. I guess some people will complain anyway, but I never hear any of them offer any solutions.

My brother had to have a Covid test a couple of days before his colonoscopy, and it cost $50, which is less than the standard cost of $100. He had an appointment at a lab, and I do not think he had to wait. He got the result the next day, and it was negative, as we expected.

The clinic in Beverly Hills where he had his colonscopy does not accept the drug store Covid tests - the tests have to be done through labs that they approve.

When I took Kevin to BH for his colonoscopy, I had to wait in the car while this was being done, as the clinic did not allow visitors and did not allow people to wait in the lobby. I was fine with this because I had parked in the underground parking and had parked next to a restroom. Parking cost $20 for two hours.

It's interesting to hear about your experiences in different parts of the country. And $20 for two hours of parking! Is that fairly average for California? I paid $1 to park in the hospital's garage when I got my test. I was there a lot less than two hours though. And it wasn't Beverly Hills. :-)

https://www.hhs.gov/coronavirus/testing-plans/index.html

In early April, governors in each state designated teams to develop testing plans, working with subject matter experts from HHS and FEMA. On May 30, these teams submitted their May-June plans. On July 10, the teams submitted their July-December plans. Both plans are available to view on this page.

The testing SNAFU's that we are encountering is entirely on the state where you reside. This is a state level problem.

It is unrealistic to think that the federal government can coordinate testing for every county, town, village, city in the whole of this vast country. This is why we have state & county health departments. Clearly, some states were not/ are not up to the task.

When my son tested positive for Covid back in September, it took 5 days for him to get his results back. After his positive test, I called the only place in town (pop. approx. 60,000) that was doing tests, a local hospital, to arrange for my husband & I to be tested. I was told that a nurse had to call back to set up the test. I'm still waiting for that call, still waiting to get that test.

Little wonder that Covid started raging out of control here in WI when you have to wait 5 days for results and that is IF you could manage to get tested. And this was a whole 5 months into the pandemic--late September--not March or April when you would expect things to not run smoothly. Five months in, the state should have had its act together but clearly did not.