Pharmacies see increase in COVID-19 testing, some confusion on where to get tests

SALISBURY, Md.- Within the last few weeks, some Eastern Shore pharmacies have been slammed.

We’re told the Delta variant may be to blame alarming people and increasing the need for COVID-19 testing.

“Now it’s kind of coming back with a vengeance and we’ve done more tests in the last couple of weeks,” Craig Schury, owner of Pemberton Pharmacy & Gift, said.

“Just the past week, I was doing one of the days was 14 tests, so we averaging about 10 to 15 so its definitely been going up,” Irfan Kahn, who works at Apple Discount Drugs, said.

And with that increase in testing a big question pharmacies are getting, is where can people get rapid COVID-19 tests?

“There has been some confusion on who has the tests and what type of tests are available, a lot of people have been calling and I know there are some tests that are in short supply right now,” Schury said.

I’m told some of that confusion can be traced back to the Maryland Department Coronavirus Testing website.

“The state website is not as up to date as it could be and some of that lies on the actual pharmacies and different people that are doing the tests not updating the fact that they are doing it or not,” Schury said.

Another thing that pharmacies are seeing right now, people doing at-home rapid testing.

But that could lead to potential error, while professionals may not be administering that test for them.

“One of the things you run into is unfortunately patient error, just because they don’t want to go up as far or they feel it’s uncomfortable, so they might get some false results,” Kahn said.

Now with all of that in mind, it isn’t clear how testing and COVID-19 will look in the future, but I’m told it’s important to keep pushing out information.

“Let’s try to increase awareness of testing, lets try to increase the awareness of vaccinations, I know there’s a lot of research being done on COVID to me there’s never enough in this realm,” Kahn said.

Apple Discount Drugs said they just started increasing the capacity of people they are taking for testing a day.

They added because of people saying they have a hard time finding tests they try to push the word out on social media that they’re doing rapid testing.