New Test Detects COVID Faster

Florida is getting 6.4 million rapid-test kits to detect COVID-19 infections at a faster rate. Schools, senior centers, and long-term care facilities are getting first dibs.

That number translates to about 400,000 kits over the next year. Gov. Ron DeSantis made the announcement Tuesday in Clearwater, and was among the first to take the new test, administered by a nurse in PPE, as required by federal law.

“And to show you, by the time I finish my remarks, we’ll have a result,” said the governor. “The good thing about this is, you do not need a lab to do it. So it will be about 15 minutes. But really, if it’s positive, it usually pops pretty quickly. The thing almost looks like a pregnancy test in some respects.”

The governor plans to request a waiver of the requirement that a nurse give the test, contending that it’s not a good use of nurses’ time.

While awaiting the results, the governor displayed figures from the CDC that show the demographic that typically live in nursing homes and long-term facilities – age 70 and above – are being targeted. The other priority is schools. Standard protocol is pulling the child suspected of being exposed or showing symptoms out of class and isolating them until a test can clear a lab – a several-days-long ordeal.

“What this does is, if you have that student who starts developing symptoms they can be taken out; they can be given this test, and we’ll know within 15 minutes whether it’s COVID or not,” DeSantis said. “If it’s not COVID then you should not, by any means, isolate any healthy student.”

Taking the lead in distributing the new test is the state Division of Emergency Management. Director Jared Moskowitz says they’re already receiving them from the feds, adding that this is another example of how the state tries to stay at the forefront of COVID-based technology.

“The governor and myself were on the phone, trying to make sure that Florida could be one of the first [states] to get these teste,” Moskowitz said. “But the federal government bought the entire first year’s supply, so we’re happy about that, obviously, because now we get them for free.”

FDEM has been in charge of distributing personal protective equipment, such as gowns, face shields, gloves and masks to long-term care facilities.

“We’ll make sure there’s no delay in getting these to nursing homes and senior centers, to make sure that seniors have testing,” said Moskowitz. “And then we’ll work with the school boards to make sure that we can get these to them as well. In our conversations with [Health and Human Services], we expect 420,000 of these could be here by Friday.”

And when the time comes that a safe and effective COVID vaccine is available, Moskowitz says the state will be ready to provide inoculations.

“Early in June we went out and purchased five million syringes; five million Band-Aids, five million alcohol swabs – so that we would be ready to avoid what all the states went through when they were all competing with themselves to get PPE,” Moskowitz said. “We wanted to make sure that we were not going to have that problem.”

As more of the new tests come in, it’s possible the state will look at replacing PCR testing, in which a swab is inserted in the nose or throat.

“I have the feeling that the general public is not going to want to wait several days; they’re going to want results as fast as possible,” said Moskowitz. “And that will reduce our costs dramatically. Over 75% of our cost at our state sites could be reduced by not having incrimination, and not having labs having to run the tests.”

Now, back to the new COVID-19 test given to Gov. Ron DeSantis. After the 15-minute waiting period, the results were in.

“Do we have the results here yet?” the governor asked the nurse.

“It’s negative,” said the nurse.

“Negative, yay,” DeSantis responded.

Florida’s 6.4 million rapid test kits are part of Uncle Sam’s plan to provide more than 150 million nationwide.