Local

COVID-19 testing centers scale back after national supply shortage

FLORIDA — An Action News Jax investigation found some health care facilities are drastically scaling back on coronavirus testing because of what they call a national shortage of supplies.

The Quidel manufacturing company reported a 96.7% sensitivity rating for its coronavirus test, which is one of the highest accuracy rates in the U.S. This also creates a high demand for its supplies.

“Last Wednesday, the Department of Human Health Services basically showed up, and they take priority, they took 753,000 of their tests,” Dr. Saman Soleymani said.

When the U.S. Department of Health and Human Service bought these supplies, Dr. Soleymani said it left little supplies for other health care facilities, like his, Avecina Medical.

Dr. Soleymani is the CEO and President of Avecina Medical in Northeast Florida. It’s one of the only rapid testing centers for COVID-19 in the area, but its current supply is low.

“Previously, we were really running as many tests as Lot J which is funded by the City,” Dr. Soleymani said. “We were running about 700 tests a day, and now we have scaled back to about 400 tests a day collectively between our drive through site and the three offices that we have.”

Action News Jax received a statement from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. “As a part of the recently announced Nursing Home rapid point-of-care initiative, last week Quidel provided approximately 93,000 COVID-19 tests dedicated to Nursing Homes nationwide,” Director of External Affairs Mia Palmieri Heck said.

The Department is distributing the first round of supplies to nursing homes that are considered to be in hot spot areas. It will also issue supplies to nursing homes nationwide that have reported any of the following:

  • Three or more confirmed or suspected new cases of COVID-19 in the last week
  • At least one new COVID-19 case in the last week after having zero previous COVID-19 cases
  • Inadequate access to testing in the last week
  • At least one new resident death due to COVID-19 in the last week
  • At least one new confirmed or suspected COVID-19 case among staff in the last week

Under the direction of Governor DeSantis, the Division launched a pilot program to combat a potential shortage of testing supplies. It created a self-swab lane at state-supported testing sites. This lane is reserved for symptomatic individuals, cutting down on their wait time, and the samples will be sent to separate labs, allowing them to receive their results faster. The following state-supported testing sites offer self-swab lanes for symptomatic individuals:

  • War Memorial Auditorium in Fort Lauderdale (Broward County)
  • Regency Square Mall (Duval County)
  • Orange County Convention Center (Orange County)
  • Hard Rock Stadium (Miami-Dade County)
  • University Town Center (Sarasota County)
  • Miami Beach Convention Center (Miami-Dade County)
  • Marlins Park (Miami-Dade County)
  • CenturyLink Sports Complex (Lee County)