Everyone on exclusive Fisher Island, even the staff, can get tested for coronavirus
Fisher Island — an exclusive enclave of multi-million dollar condos and homes and one of the wealthiest ZIP Codes in the country — has purchased thousands of rapid COVID-19 blood test kits from the University of Miami Health System for all of its residents and workers.
The private island, set along Government Cut and nestled between Miami and Miami Beach and accessible only by boat, worked out a deal with UHealth to make the tests available to the 800 or so families that live there, and all the workers who maintain the property and patrol its streets.
The purchase and availability of the testing are in sharp contrast to much of the rest of the state, where only about 1 percent of the population has been tested for the deadly virus that has caused a global pandemic. Most people who want a test have to meet certain criteria during a screening. Then an appointment must be set up, which generally means a lengthy wait in line. Those without vehicles can’t even access drive-thru testing sites.
But that wouldn’t cut it on Fisher Island, where memberships in the Fisher Island Club cost about $250,000 and the average annual income was $2.5 million in 2015 — the highest of any ZIP Code in America, according to Bloomberg.
Sissy DeMaria, a spokeswoman for Fisher Island, noted that half of the island’s residents are over the age of 65, making them vulnerable to COVID-19.
“Fisher Island asked UM Health Clinic whether the antibody testing could be available and facilitated for all employees and residents through the on-site UHealth Clinic,” she said, adding that the island offered to cover the costs.
Testing and follow-up contact tracing for those who test positive is expected to be completed this week. The island ordered 1,800 testing kits at $17 each, enough that every resident and staff member could be tested, UHealth spokeswoman Lisa Worley said. UHealth has a clinic on Fisher Island whose doctors have helped administer the COVID-19 tests, Worley said.
“This is what the Fisher Island residents wanted,” Worley said. “Our physicians ordered it for them, they paid for it themselves.”
DeMaria said the cost of the tests came out of the island’s annual operating budget.
It wasn’t clear whether the easy access to testing on the island has affected residents’ adherence to social distancing measures. According to state data, there are between five and nine confirmed cases of COVID-19 in the Fisher Island ZIP Code, 33109.
DeMaria said the island has closed golf, tennis and marina facilities and limited island access to “essential personnel and visitors.”
The tests, which are finger-prick blood tests, detect the presence of antibodies, an important aspect that could determine who has already had the disease and is likely immune. It isn’t clear yet how long that immunity lasts.
The tests haven’t been widely available in South Florida. On Monday, the first drive-thru testing site in Miami-Dade to use it — instead of the uncomfortable nasal swabs used at other sites, which are the preferred method to diagnose COVID-19 — opened outside Aventura Mall. But the site was only accommodating 200 appointments a day, with priority going to seniors and first responders.
Miami-Dade County Mayor Carlos Gimenez said the Fisher Island purchase was also separate from a COVID-19 blood testing program being administered by the county and University of Miami researchers, which involves testing a random sample of 750 residents across the county each week.
“None of the tests that the county purchased for the UM study have gone specifically to Fisher Island,” Gimenez said. “Our program has no intersection with whatever they are doing.”
Earlier this month, the mayor said the county secured 10,000 blood tests that cost $17 apiece. They were supplied by a company named BioMedomics, out of North Carolina, the same company that made the tests for Fisher Island.
A person with knowledge of Fisher Island’s testing who wished to remain anonymous said the test was offered to several Miami-Dade police officers who work there, and that results were available in 15 minutes.
Despite the rapid results, many federal health officials don’t recommend blood tests for diagnosing COVID-19, the deadly disease spawned by the novel coronavirus. That’s because it can take days, even weeks after someone has been infected to detect antibodies in the blood stream, causing some false-negative results.
Still, the tests are valuable in plotting the spread of the disease and helping health experts determine who has already fought it off. That could be especially helpful in places like Florida where nasal swab tests for the active virus were slow to get off the ground.
Worley said the tests that Fisher Island bought were unrelated to the University of Miami’s research efforts. But the medical director for the university’s clinic on the island, Elizabeth Greig, suggested otherwise in an April 7 message to islanders, which was posted on the island’s homeowners association website.
Greig suggested Fisher Island has a unique role to play in the university’s antibody testing efforts: “to monitor how spread occurs in a nearly contained environment, unlike anywhere else in the world, and to figure out how testing early and often could change the course of this disease.”
“This is why we are not doing random sampling, but the entire island,” Greig wrote. “Your participation in this field work is potentially both informative for the world, helpful for the health of this island, and some possible peace of mind for you, but it is entirely voluntary whether you want to get tested or not.”
Greig recommended that only people without symptoms take the tests, given that they aren’t recommended for diagnosing the novel coronavirus.
After a few days of testing on the island, Greig said the results “mirror the unfortunate hypothesis of the study — that there are more positive people out there than we knew about, that the virus may have been circulating in South Florida for longer than we appreciate, and that it is clear that you can be positive and not appreciate having any symptoms at all.”
Nonetheless, Greig said, she had not yet found any evidence of community spread on the island, though she noted it was still early in the process.
She added that the tests were limited to people living and working on Fisher Island, but that she hopes to get more tests for “additional clinical use” for members of the community who aren’t currently on the island.
“I think that is not far off the horizon, so if you are off the island, just please be patient,” Greig wrote.
Worley acknowledged to the New York Times on Tuesday that the arrangement with Fisher Island “may have created the impression that certain communities would receive preferential treatment.” She said the University of Miami is “revising its process for reviewing testing outreach requests to ensure it meets our mission.”
As of Monday afternoon, the Florida Department of Health was reporting that almost 21,000 people in Florida had contracted COVID-19 and that 470 people had died. Miami-Dade County had the highest numbers of infections and deaths.
Update: This story has been updated with details about the cost and administration of the tests and the University of Miami’s explanation for buying them.
This story was originally published April 13, 2020 at 4:44 PM.
