Dr. Amir Attaran says he and his family got COVID testing at the Indio Fairgrounds on Saturday.

And we subsequently received results for my wife, for me, the adults but not for the children and Riverside County is apparently failing to provide test results to children through our county testing system,” he says.

The law and public health professor says he called, emailed and messaged countless times to get the results.

“I finally had to write that I was going to contact a member of Congress about this and at that point I got a phone call but it shouldn’t take this ,” he says that was six days later, “what you’re getting is a result that’s late and essentially not very meaningful by the time it arrives.”

He says test results should come back within hours, like other countries, “What I’ve seen in California is worse than Ethiopia, I mean it’s just a completely administratively broken testing system … Riverside has problems and they need to be fixed or it will cost infections and lives.”

We reached out to Riverside County Department of Public Health to ask what went wrong and if in fact there is a problem with getting children’s results. They sent us this statement:

Public Health instructs parents everyday on how to access their child’s test result, which is available within 2-3 days of the test. Parents receive not only a phone call automatically, but they also may see their child’s COVID-19 result in the MyChart app.

If anyone is having difficulty accessing their test result or their child’s test result in the MyChart app, they can call 800-945-6171 to get their results over the phone.

We strive to make accessing test results easy.

Dr. Attaran says that was not his experience and testing is a fundamental way to stop the virus, “The most basic thing, which is to test people, that system is still broken in December about a year into this crisis, it’s tragic.”

Parent Claims County Testing System is Broken