Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis announced an initiative to increase access to at-home COVID testing, delivering about a million self-administered units, first to nursing homes and then to senior centers.
“If you’re young and healthy, you don’t need to be running out and getting tested every day,” he said at a news conference at the Rehabilitation Center of the Palm Beaches in West Palm Beach on Thursday.. “People who are testing that have high-value, that’s where we want to focus.”
Most of the cases in Florida are omicron, but delta is still more serious, he said. “This variant is spreading much faster than other variants, but is less lethal.”
COVID is “not something that’s going to vanish off the face of the earth, but it’s going to be something we’re going to live with,” DeSantis said. “With prevention, with treatments, with acquired immunity,” it’s something the state can manage, he said.
DeSantis and Kevin Guthrie, director of the Florida Division of Emergency Management, also revealed that the state has 800,000 to a million other COVID tests that have expired, confirming for the first time an allegation from Agriculture Commissioner Nikki Fried, who is running for governor against him this year.
DeSantis said the tests expired in the months as the virus waned last year when there was little demand for them. Guthrie said the state was checking with the federal government to see if the stockpiled tests still might be usable.
Concerning at-home tests, Guthrie said the state in less than a few days had secured nearly 1 million of them and will send out the first supply Thursday to nursing homes and senior care facilities. Those sites can then ask for more kits if they are needed.
The leadership group, including Surgeon General Dr. Joseph Ladapo, focused on testing only those people who are at risk, showing symptoms or are otherwise vulnerable to becoming ill with COVID.
“National leadership has infused people with the instruction that if you’re healthy, you still need to get tested,” Ladapo said. But he called that a “nonsensical approach,” and DeSantis is helping the state focus on the “seniors-first” process that he first adopted when the state was inundated with the virus.
“There is an entire structure happening behind the scenes ... that is allowing the the state to get the resources and treatments into the hands of those who really need them,” said Simone Marstiller, secretary for the Florida Agency for Health Care Administration.
In a question-and-answer session with reporters at the end of the news conference, DeSantis said he had not been tested recently for COVID. He says he has not had any symptoms, so he has not been tested.
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