Free COVID testing won’t end at Miami-Dade sites after all, mayor says
Free COVID-19 testing for people without insurance will not end at sites across Miami-Dade County in July after all, even though federal funding for the effort is drying up.
Miami-Dade County Mayor Daniella Levine Cava announced Thursday at a news conference that she has secured an agreement with Utah-based Nomi Health to continue free testing and vaccination services at more than a dozen county sites.
Nomi Health is a private provider Miami-Dade hired to provide COVID-19 testing and vaccine services in the county during the pandemic.
Anyone who lives in the U.S. and does not have health insurance can go to a Miami-Dade County site, sign a form, and get tested for free, Levine Cava said at the conference, which was held in front of the Nomi Health mobile test site at Stephen P. Clark Government Center in downtown Miami.
That includes the test site at Zoo Miami in South Miami-Dade, the Joseph Caleb Center in Miami and the popular site at Tropical Park, which is open around the clock.
For people without insurance, Nomi Health will now cover the cost of the test. For people with insurance, their insurer will continue to cover the cost. COVID-19 vaccines will also continue to remain free for everyone.
The news comes just days after Levine Cava notified county commissioners in a memo Monday that COVID-19 testing for people without insurance would start costing in July. In the memo, she said that without federal support for COVID-19 services, the county would incur “unbudgeted expenditures” that would “adversely” affect the county’s ability to provide services.
Previously, Nomi Health was funding its testing operations through the Federal Health Resources and Services Administration’s Uninsured program. The program stopped accepting reimbursement claims for COVID-19 testing and treatment services on March 22 and stopped accepting claims for vaccine administration on
April 5.
The county then began relying on reimbursement funds from the Federal Emergency Management Agency to pay for tests and vaccines for the uninsured at county sites. The 100% federal reimbursement ends in July.
“It is increasingly clear that here in Miami-Dade County, our residents still want and need access to these critical public health services,” Levine Cava said, noting that county sites administer, on average, 225 vaccine doses and 11,000 tests a day.
After the news conference, when asked what made Nomi agree to take on the testing cost for the county, Levine Cava mentioned the “joint commitment” her administration and Nomi had to provide testing to people, regardless of their ability to pay.
Nomi Health “crunched the numbers and they made an extraordinary commitment to cover the cost on their own out of what would otherwise be their profits,” Levine Cava told the Miami Herald, noting that the provider was taking a “calculated risk” with the decision.
As for vaccines, all of the COVID shots available in the U.S. were purchased by the federal government and are administrated through providers that are enrolled in the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s COVID-19 Vaccination Program. Vaccine providers enrolled in the program cannot charge people for the vaccine.
In Dade, COVID cases are rising and so are hospitalizations, though it hasn’t reached the levels seen during the omicron-fueled winter surge.