Marlins Park opening for drive-thru testing of seniors. Appointments required

People 65 and older with possible coronavirus symptoms can make appointments for drive-thru testing for COVID-19 that begins Wednesday morning at Marlins Park.

Frank Rollason, Miami-Dade’s emergency director, said the site could provide up to 300 tests a day. Miami-Dade said operators will begin answering calls between 5 p.m. and 7 p.m. Tuesday for Wednesday appointments, then resume taking appointments at 9 a.m. The number to call is 305-499-8767. The county said the hotline will shut down once all appointments have been filled.

Coronavirus symptoms include fever, cough and shortness of breath, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Rollason said it will take about three days to get results from the tests.

“This is a silent enemy,” said Joe Carollo, a Miami city commissioner who spoke at the Marlins Park press conference announcing the start of testing. “You don’t know when you’re going to get hit.”

In announcing the launch of the testing site in Miami’s Little Havana neighborhood, local authorities said they limited availability to seniors because of the amount of test kits available. Forced to prioritize, they said they wanted to focus testing on the elderly population, since it’s more at risk for severe symptoms or death from COVID-19.

“We do have a limited number of test kits and we have a limited number of laboratory tests we can do,” said Carlos Migoya, CEO of the county-funded Jackson hospital system. “We want to make sure we take care of the highest-risk populations first, then we can go to the other populations.”

City paramedics with Miami will be on hand for the testing. The testing begins at 9 a.m. Wednesday at Marlins Park, with appointments required through the hotline. The Florida National Guard will help manage logistics at the ballpark, which already has surrounding streets closed and a parking lot marked off with cones for a staging area.

The National Guard is also helping run drive-thru testing operations at Hard Rock Stadium, which began taking samples on Sunday. Migoya said the same hotline could be used for Hard Rock appointments starting Wednesday. Like Marlins Park, the Hard Rock site has been reserved for people 65 and over with COVID-19 symptoms, along with first responders.

Carlos Gimenez, the county’s mayor, said he wanted to reduce the focus on testing and instead have all residents assume they have COVID-19 and they’ve just contracted it too recently to have symptoms.

“The message is: Don’t wait to get tested to think that you’re positive. We have to assume everybody here is positive,” he said. “If we do that, then we change our behavior. There are a lot of people in this town right now who are positive with COVID-19 that don’t even know they have it. They’re the biggest spreaders.”

This story was originally published March 24, 2020 at 6:14 PM.