Demand for coronavirus testing has soared once again with a resurgence of Covid-19 cases across the country.
Photo: erik s lesser/ShutterstockTaylor Hernandez got a coronavirus test immediately after a new employee at the convenience-store chain where she works came in sick.
The Augusta, Ga.,-area team trainer expected results in two to seven days. Instead, she has been waiting for 16. And she hasn’t gotten paid. Her employer said its policy is to pay for only up to 80 hours of wait time, but she said her manager told her she must first return to work with a negative result in hand.
The convenience chain didn’t respond to a request for comment about Ms. Hernandez’s situation.
“Money was already getting tight and now I’ve been out for two weeks and a day,” said Ms. Hernandez, who is 10-weeks pregnant. Her husband’s income alone isn’t enough to keep up with their bills and after three weeks without pay, they have fallen behind.
As Covid-19 cases resurge across the country, the demand for testing has soared once again, creating backlogs as long as several weeks. For many people, particularly essential workers who can’t do their jobs from home, longer waits can mean time without pay while they wait to be allowed back to work. Others have been forced to use vacation time.
The rules for unemployment benefits vary by state, but in many cases, individuals who haven’t been laid off and aren’t positive for Covid-19 aren’t eligible. Georgia’s guidelines say that before an individual can apply for pandemic unemployment assistance, he or she must apply for and be denied traditional unemployment assistance. A spokeswoman for the Georgia Department of Labor said state unemployment insurance wouldn’t cover scenarios like Ms. Hernandez’s, but pandemic unemployment assistance might.
Ms. Hernandez said she didn’t apply because she kept thinking her test results would come back imminently and didn’t understand how the benefits worked in her case.
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Waiting without pay for Covid-19 test results can be financially devastating. Nearly half of American families don’t have savings equivalent to 2½ weeks of take-home pay, said Fiona Greig, director of consumer research for the JPMorgan Chase Institute.
Past research on family savings focused on month-to-month dips in income, but she said situations like Ms. Hernandez’s “could be even more dramatic since it’s losing all pay.”
Ashlyn Reynolds wasn’t paid for two weeks in July while awaiting Covid-19 results. The incoming college senior spends the summers saving for school by working at a restaurant near Richmond, Va.
People lined up to get a Covid-19 swab test in San Francisco on Thursday. For many, longer waits for test results can mean time without pay.
Photo: David Paul Morris/Bloomberg NewsShe scheduled a test after starting to feel sick earlier in July, thinking the turnaround time would be five to seven days. The wait stretched to 17 days before Ms. Reynolds received a negative result. A manager said the family-run business doesn’t pay staff who are out awaiting a test result.
“It depleted my savings that I use when I’m in school,” Ms. Reynolds said of the delay.
Although she has picked up extra shifts since returning, she needed to dip into money she had put away to pay her rent.
“I’m working 10 a.m. to 2 a.m. just to catch up with finances,” she said.
March’s $2.2 trillion coronavirus stimulus bill included expanded unemployment insurance eligibility for self-employed workers, freelancers and independent contractors. The Families First Coronavirus Response Act, passed in March, also offers tax credits to companies with fewer than 500 employees who pay workers’ wages while out briefly for Covid-related reasons.
But the expanded unemployment insurance eligibility, which expired at the end of July, doesn’t account for workers who make most of their money on commission.
“If I’m not working, I’m not earning,” said Denise Jennings, an independent notary loan-signing agent in Virginia who developed Covid-like symptoms July 10.
When she got tested, Ms. Jennings, 49 years old, budgeted for a five-day turnaround for results. She didn’t plan for the 16 business days it has stretched to. Now, she’s still in limbo, quarantining and out of work while she waits to find out if she can assure clients she’s Covid-free.
“Had I not had a little cushion, it means the loss of my ability to pay rent,” she said.
Write to Deanna Paul at deanna.paul@wsj.com
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