Miami authorities must wait days for coronavirus results over delay in testing tools

Miami-Dade Mayor Carlos Gimenez said Thursday local authorities have to wait days for results on possible novel coronavirus cases because federal authorities haven’t sent a state lab in Miami the testing materials that can shorten the process to a few hours.

Gimenez held his second meeting in two weeks on the virus that is rattling global stock markets and forcing drastic measures around the world, including the closing of Japan’s school system. As of Thursday, there had been no confirmed cases in Florida, but Gimenez said the county’s government is treating the virus as a potential emergency ahead of some of the largest events on Miami-Dade’s calendar, including the Ultra music fest and spring break.

“I liken this to a hurricane threat,” he said at a press conference outside his 29th Floor offices in County Hall. The remarks followed the mayor’s first meeting on coronavirus with a string of county agencies and other government entities, including the school system, PortMiami and Miami International Airport. Gimenez said he met last week with state health officials on the virus.

Gimenez cautioned against overreaction to a virus that remains a potential threat to Miami-Dade, rather than an actual one. He urged residents to follow basic flu-season protocols, including frequent hand washing, the use of hand sanitizers and not reporting to work when ill.

The mayor expressed some frustration that a fix for testing kits from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention had not yet arrived at the state’s Miami lab. He said the delay forces officials to wait days for results from a lab hundreds of miles away, rather than the hours required for a local test.

“It’s the largest county in the state of Florida, with a large international airport. We should have kits, let me put it this way,” said Gimenez, who is running in the Republican congressional primary in Florida’s 26th District. “I’m not crazy that it takes two days to get the results back.”

As of its last update earlier this month, the Florida Department of Health said it was sending specimens to the CDC lab in Atlanta and waiting for results, which can take three to five days. Federal officials are working to resolve issues with the tests but have not provided any updates in recent days.

Reynauld Jean, disease director at the Florida Health Department’s Miami-Dade office, said the problem is the local lab has the coronavirus kits but not the substances known as “reagents” that allow the virus test to be performed. Jean said the reagents should arrive from the CDC in two to three weeks. “Usually they come together,” Jean said.

Gimenez said Thursday’s closed-door meeting before the press briefing included discussion about how coronavirus, which has been gaining attention as a threat to world health since January, might affect large events on the Miami area’s March calendar. Those include downtown Miami’s Ultra, which begins March 20, and the county Youth Fair in the Kendall area, which begins March 12. But the county hasn’t decided what to do regarding those events, Gimenez said.

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“We haven’t come up with any specific recommendations yet,” he said. “Those are things we’re going to be discussing in the next week. Are there any precautions, is there anything different, we’re going to do with spring break or with Ultra?”

Ray Martinez, a former police chief now running security for Ultra, said he received a call Thursday on coronavirus from Frank Rollason, Gimenez’s emergency director. “We haven’t had those conversations yet, but we will be having them,” Martinez said. “We’ve been monitoring it, obviously. Everybody has.”

In a statement, Ultra said it plans extra hand-sanitizing stations at the three-day event, and will be promoting health tips related to coronavirus with attendees. “There are no plans to cancel, postpone, move or scale down the 2020 production,” the festival said. “The health and safety of our attendees, artists, and staff are of paramount concern to us and we will continue to follow the recommendations of the experts respecting issues on public health.”

Miami’s leaders who raised alarms about their ability to test for novel coronavirus weren’t alone. State and county health officials across the country are currently relying on the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to test specimens at the agency’s lab in Atlanta. As of the CDC’s latest update, only a dozen state and county public health jurisdictions have the ability to test.

The issue with the testing kits, which were received at Florida Department of Health labs earlier this month, centers around a component that is not functioning properly, making the tests unreliable. The CDC said earlier this month that local health officials were reporting “inconclusive results,” or returns that were neither positive nor negative, when running diagnostic tests on the kits.

The state health department, meanwhile, has so far declined to share information about how many people in Florida have been tested and how long it has had to wait for results.

At a U.S. Senate committee hearing addressing the threat of global pandemics earlier this month, former federal health officials said they are concerned about how long it has been taking to test for local novel coronavirus cases, adding that state health departments should not be relying on sending specimens to federal labs and waiting days for the results to come back.

Ideally, federal officials would be able to ship portable test kits to U.S. hospitals and physicians, said Scott Gottlieb, who was the Food and Drug Administration commissioner from 2017-2019.

“We should be trying to find it in the community,” Gottlieb said, at the hearing held by the U.S. Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs. “That’s how we’re going to spot small outbreaks and prevent them from becoming larger outbreaks.”

For Miami-Dade government, the coronavirus threat looms in multiple tiers. First, there are the county-run ports that bustle with foreign visitors. About 52 percent of the 26 million passengers that arrived at Miami International Airport last year were from international flights. MIA has no direct connections to Asia, where the global spread of coronavirus began.

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PortMiami is also a popular destination for international travelers heading to sea. A cruise ship denied entry at two Caribbean ports over a suspected case of coronavirus will return to PortMiami on Sunday after it was determined a crew member only had influenza, PortMiami director Juan Kuryla said.

Miami-Dade’s paramedics, hospital system and emergency workers also would be called upon to manage a public-health emergency brought on by coronavirus. That could include enforcing quarantine rules and distributing supplies, Gimenez said.

Finally, Miami-Dade’s 28,000-position payroll represents the second largest workforce in the county, behind the school system. That leaves the county more vulnerable than most employers to facing a coronavirus case within its ranks of employees.

The coronavirus scare overlaps with scrutiny of how county contractors manage sick employees. Security guards working for a private contractor hired by Miami International Airport recently told county commissioners they must forgo pay if they want to stay home sick, and risk losing their positions with Allied Universal. Union representatives said that since Miami-Dade does not require sick leave for contractors like Allied Universal and its competitors, most outsourced workers assigned to the county don’t get paid sick days.

During the press conference, Gimenez emphasized the need for Miami-Dade residents not to spread illness at work. “If you’re sick, stay home,” he said.

Gimenez also urged significant changes in how people greet each other in Miami, a city known for warm embraces among friends and acquaintances.

“We want to remind people to wash their hands regularly. Use hand sanitizer. Cover their face with an arm” when they sneeze or cough, Gimenez said. “A nod is better than a handshake or a kiss.”

This post was updated to correct Ray Martinez’s role as head of security for the Ultra music festival.

This story was originally published February 27, 2020 at 6:02 PM.