Samantha Blake went to get a coronavirus test at the fire station on Sherman Avenue NW in early September as a safety precaution before visiting her parents in Delaware. “I haven’t seen them since Christmas,” she says. “It’s the longest I’ve ever gone without seeing them, so it’s been really hard.”

When Blake, a Bloomingdale resident, arrived around 6 p.m., she was told by a healthcare worker that the D.C. site — which is open from 4 to 8 p.m. — was already out of tests. The woman said they had been running out within an hour, and that Blake should get in line by 3:30 p.m.

But other reports of people being turned away have raised questions about the city’s supply. They have also coincided with an apparent shift in its messaging on testing, with D.C. urging Washingtonians to seek tests primarily through their doctors or healthcare providers, rather than through public sites.

“I was kind of shocked, because I thought right now testing would be such a priority with things looking to open back up again,” Blake says of her experience.

On Monday, dozens of people were turned away from the city’s testing site at Judiciary Square after LabCorp, the city’s main provider of tests, cut its supply to the District. NBC Washington first reported the news.

The city, however, says it has not seen an uptick in early closures or people being turned away from public testing sites following the reduction in test kits.

Christopher Geldart, acting director of the D.C. Department of Public Works, says LabCorp notified the city of a “supply issue” on their end about a month ago, and wanted to limit the number of tests it was sending. He was not able to specify what the issue was.

Geldart says LabCorp, which is currently the sole supplier of tests to its public testing sites, wanted to cut D.C.’s weekly supply from 10,000 kits per week to 6,000. The city negotiated with the company and they met in the middle. “We settled at [8,000 test kits] with the understanding that as they get more in they will send more to us,” he says.

D.C. had been providing large sites with about 400 tests per day and each of its four fire stations with about 300, according to Geldart. Over the past few weeks, large sites got 300, while fire stations received between 250 and 300.

Geldart notes that the city previously did not have a minimum weekly test kit requirement as part of its agreement with LabCorp. LabCorp told the city on Monday that it would bring the number back up to 10,000 by the end of this week, though Geldart says, “that could change at the end of next week where we go back down to 8,000,” if the company faces other supply issues.

Geldart says there are variables that can lead to a site running out — and the city had seen that happen before LabCorp cut its supply. “Sometimes we have more kits than people that come, and sometimes we have more people that come than we have kits for that day,” he says.

There are other limiting factors, too, like the city’s overall testing and processing capacity, though D.C. sometimes has a surplus of unused tests from a given site that they can then move around the system.

A spokesperson for LabCorp told DCist in an email that “LabCorp has been working with D.C. officials throughout the pandemic in addressing the quantities of COVID-19 tests based on requests, and we will continue to do so.” They added that “LabCorp has significant additional capacity if needed,” and said the company is currently performing 200,000 molecular tests daily, seeing results, on average, within 1 day from specimen pickup.

The reports of shortages have coincided with an apparent shift in the city’s messaging on testing. Since the early summer, D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser has repeatedly said that anyone who needs a test should get one.

But Geldart emphasizes that the city is urging residents to seek tests through their doctor or healthcare provider, because they are “connected with their healthcare.” He says the testing that D.C. offers only accounts for around 45% of all testing in the city.

Bowser echoed that sentiment in late August when she announced that she had ordered insurers to cover the full cost of COVID-19 tests for certain asymptomatic people who may be at high risk for contracting the virus. D.C.-licensed insurers were previously only required to cover testing in accordance with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s guidelines.

That apparent shift in messaging may also depend on how locals define “need.” “Public sites are there for folks that need to get a test,” Geldart says, “and going on non-essential travel or going to visit friends or things like that is not ‘need to get a test.'”

A spokesperson for Bowser did not immediately respond to DCist’s request for comment on the District’s messaging around testing.

Blake, who got tested at the Sherman Avenue fire station, recently turned 26. She was booted off her parents’ health insurance at the end of August and had just started getting health care through her job at a non-profit. She says she opted to go to a public testing site to avoid “any mixups” during the transition.

Blake got a test back in June with “no problem,” but says her experience this month left her concerned about testing reliability. “People I know, they have much more chaotic schedules than I do and a lot more barriers to get over in order to get to a test site,” she says. “So, if places are running out of tests so easily, I think there should be some way for people to figure that out.”