With Christmas weekend finally here, many people are making their final preparations for holiday gatherings with friends, family and other loved ones.
While some are getting together final ingredients for Christmas dinner, others are heading out to get a status report for their health with COVID-19 still very much prevalent.
Many people are lining up, or have already done their part to get a COVID-19 test before gathering with other people over the coming days.
"There's a huge demand for testing right now, and I think there's going to be more testing coming," said Dr. Joseph Chow from Western New York Immediate Care with Susan Rose on WBEN. "From the standpoint of that, I actually think we're in a reasonable spot. I don't think it's worse than last year."
Not all pharmacies and healthcare facilities are offering testing for Christmas Eve or Christmas this year, there are a number of places that will be open offering to test anyone that comes in to see if they are positive or negative for COVID-19. Western New York Immediate Care is one of the facilities offering testing this weekend, as is Brighton-Eggert Pharmacy in Tonawanda.
Dr. Chow recommends that if you are in need of a COVID-19 test this weekend, be sure to call around to see which facilities are open and offering testing.
Meanwhile, at-home testing kits have been a huge talking point this week, with five million at-home tests likely to be available in New York State by the end of the year.
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"The home tests are typically antigen tests, [which is] a little bit different from the PCR tests. The PCR test is widely considered the 'gold standard', so that's the most accurate test you can get," Dr. Chow said. "That being said, the home tests do have good utility to them also."
However, if you are looking to buy an at-home rapid COVID-19 test before seeing others this Christmas, you may be out of luck finding them in stock.
"We are completely sold out," said owner and pharmacist at Brighton-Eggert Pharmacy, Don Arthur. "In the pharmacy space, we're used to purchasing from multiple distributors, and every single one of those distributors are out of stock. Unfortunately, we're seeing exactly what we saw almost two years ago with masks, hand sanitizer, disposable sterile gloves."
Arthur says that with the recent high demand for at-home COVID-19 testing kits, if you're looking to purchase them in-store, the price of those kits are likely to go up.
"If you remember back in the summer, you could go into any chain pharmacy and buy a two-pack of the BinaxNOW. We were only testing 20 people a day through our drive-through facility. Fortunately, the cases were low and the need was low," Arthur said. "But now here we are, Omicron showed up within the last few weeks, it's over 70%-80% of the cases in America, and at-home testing at chain pharmacies and independent pharmacies are becoming more-and-more difficult to find."
So how long could it be before we start to see some at-home testing kits back on the shelves at places like Brighton-Eggert Pharmacy?
"We're actually looking at bringing in pallets of home tests, but our distributors' message has changed twice in the last 24 hours," Arthur said. "I had thought Jan. 4 we would receive home testing for the community, but now they're telling me second week of January."
For those who are luck enough to have an at-home COVID-19 testing kit, Dr. Chow says this holiday that if you test positive for COVID-19 and are feeling symptoms of the virus, you are really considered to be positive for COVID-19.
"[The at-home tests] do have utility in that if you're planning on going to an event and you're feeling a little sick, you take a home test and it is positive, you really should not go to that event. You should stay home and isolate, in that case," Dr. Chow said.
With Omicron officially detected in Western New York, there is some concern that cases will be on the rise again shortly after the holiday weekend. Reports on the variant indicate that Omicron is much more transmissible than the Delta variant of COVID-19, but not much more is known other than that.
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However, judging on how other variants around the world seem to be coming-and-going from region-to-region, Arthur is hopeful that the Omicron variant will run its course and then subside over time.
"It seems like the message has been pretty consistent that this variant that showed up in South Africa looks, the reports are that they've passed peak. It came on very quickly, and fortunately it looks like it may have left South Africa or it has passed peak. I'm hoping that will be our experience," Arthur said. "The timing could not have been worse. If this had happened during Halloween, it would have been difficult and challenging. But for this to have happened to our community the week of Christmas, it's very difficult."