SARASOTA – Governor DeSantis announced millions of rapid COVID-19 tests are heading to Florida.
“Yesterday the president announced that the federal government had procured 150 million of these new rapid antigen tests, COVID diagnostic antigen tests,” said Governor of Florida, Ron DeSantis.
Governor DeSantis says the government will portion the tests out to states based on population.
“They are going to send it to all nursing homes and long term care facilities, a lot of them, and then they are going to send the state of Florida 6.4 million on top of that,” said DeSantis.
The tests will bypass the lab, taking about 15 minutes to get results, something the governor demonstrated live during his press conference Tuesday in Clearwater.
However, rapid tests do need to be administered by a nurse.
“So I think one of the things we’re going to have to figure out is some of these nursing facilities, obviously they have that but some of the other places we want to go, they may not necessarily have someone on staff, is there a way to get a CLIA waiver to allow some other folks to be able to administer,” said DeSantis.
Besides protecting the most vulnerable population, DeSantis wants to have rapid testing available at schools
“If you have that student who starts developing symptoms they can be taken out, given this test and we’ll know within 15 minutes if it’s COVID or not,” said DeSantis.
“I think it’ll be a good tool, and we’ll continue to use it, protect our most vulnerable, and to make sure we can keep the kids in school,” said DeSantis.
Governor DeSantis says the shipment of rapid tests should be in Florida by the end of the week.
