Florida says it has enough coronavirus tests but isn’t using newer CDC guidelines
Florida state leaders on Friday sought to reassure the public that they have sufficient novel coronavirus testing kits, one day after the governor’s office said state health officials couldn’t follow expanded U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention guidelines for testing a larger pool of people.
On Thursday, the governor’s office had pointed to a lack of CDC testing kits and worries about overwhelming state labs as reasons for their more narrow testing criteria.
The newer CDC guidelines allow testing for any patient recommended by a physician who has ruled out other respiratory illnesses.
“At this time, we don’t have any unmet needs for testing capacity,” Lt. Gov. Jeanette Nuñez said during a press conference in West Palm Beach with Florida Sens. Marco Rubio and Rick Scott about the fast-spreading illness.
There are three patients in Florida who have tested positive for the virus and another Florida resident has tested positive in Washington. Officials say they’re monitoring dozens more potential cases.
In addition to those cases, the Florida Department of Health reported 55 negative test results and 51 pending results as of Friday. The agency said it is monitoring 264 people for potential COVID-19 symptoms.
Nuñez’s statement drew a followup question from Rubio, who asked her to clarify if Florida could test everyone necessary.
“That’s a nuanced question,” she said.
But she tried to make one point: “Right now we don’t have any concerns about testing from a capacity standpoint.”
The lieutenant governor told the Miami Herald there was “confusion” Thursday with CDC guidelines. On Tuesday, Vice President Mike Pence said the CDC was expanding its guidelines to allow COVID-19 testing for any patient that a physician recommended be tested, once other respiratory ailments were ruled out.
“Today, we will issue new guidance from the CDC that will make it clear that any American can be tested, no restrictions, subject to doctors’ orders,” Pence said at the time.
Nuñez said Friday that it was her understanding that the state has no limitations on its ability to test, and added that commercial labs coming online with COVID-19 testing next week should help further reduce strain on state labs.
“We’re wanting to ensure that doctors don’t willy-nilly just kind of say ‘you have the sniffles? Go,’” she said.
As of Thursday, the state said it was following the CDC’s previous standards for testing, that a patient meet two of the following three criteria:
▪ Travel to or from an area with widespread community transmission — Italy, China, South Korea and Japan — and showing symptoms of COVID-19: cough, shortness of breath and fever.
▪ Close contact with a confirmed COVID-19 case, with the same symptoms.
▪ Severe, acute lower respiratory illness and fever requiring hospitalization, and without an alternate diagnosis, like the flu.
Private medical testing labs, like Quest Diagnostic and LabCorp, have announced that they’ll be ready to begin testing as soon as next week, which would bump up Florida’s ability to test for COVID-19.
“We’ll see a lot more tests and everybody will have better access,” Scott said.
At the press conference, both Scott and Rubio also called it unfortunate that the first round of coronavirus tests released to the state were faulty, which meant Florida initially had to continue to route tests through CDC headquarters in Atlanta, slowing results.
On Feb. 9, the state announced that its three Department of Health labs in Miami, Tampa and Jacksonville would begin testing for novel coronavirus, a way to cut wait times for results. The following week, testing results slowly trickled in, until a spike of negative results reported on Friday signified some uptick in the testing done across the state.
“I wish things would have been done differently a month ago. We’ll have to look into why that happened,” Rubio said.
Nuñez said routing tests through Atlanta took three to five days to get results, but the in-state tests have results as fast as 24 hours.
The senators also spoke about the $8 billion in coronavirus funding Congress passed on Thursday. Florida is in line for about $27 million of that funding, some of which will go toward loans for small businesses that face losses because of the coronavirus.
This story was originally published March 6, 2020 at 5:00 PM.
