LOCAL: State to begin antibody testing, governor announces.
Governor also outlines new rule for admissions for nursing homes
Gov. Ron DeSantis said Tuesday that Florida soon would begin antibody testing at hospitals and at state drive-thru testing sites to find out if people had the new coronavirus but didn’t know it.
“Antibody testing is finally here,” he said at a news conference in Sarasota.
He said the tests would be available at drive-thru coronavirus testing sites at various locations in the state. They will also go to hospitals, where he said there is a special need to learn if doctors and nurses have developed resistance to coronavirus.
Studies have shown that many people are likely to have had coronavirus without ever knowing it.
“The vast majority of [coronavirus] cases either appear to be asymptomatic or the symptoms appear to be so minor you wouldn’t necessarily think to get medical attention,” DeSantis said. Other people might have had a nasty illness in February, before there was great awareness about the new coronavirus, and the antibody test could reveal it was the cause.
Even though medical experts don’t yet know how long an immunity might last, DeSantis said, the information is important, especially for people such as health care workers.
DeSantis said the program would start with 200,000 antibody tests. Details will be announced later this week, he said.
Nursing homes
The governor also outlined a new emergency rule governing nursing home admissions. No one can be discharged from a hospital to a nursing home without first being tested and showing a negative result.
DeSantis said other states that have allowed people who have tested positive for coronavirus to be admitted to nursing homes, something he said “has not been a good standard of practice.”
He said Florida hospitals have not been sending patients back to nursing homes who came in with coronavirus unless they have two negative tests. The new rule expands that policy to patients who didn’t arrive at the hospital with coronavirus; that person would require a negative test to get discharged to a senior facility.
The reason, he said, is that the risk of sending an asymptomatic person — who has coronavirus, doesn’t know it, but could spread it — back to a nursing home is too risky. Older people, especially with underlying health conditions, are most vulnerable.
DeSantis said people 85 and older accounted for 5% of the state’s documented positive coronavirus cases, and 30% of the fatalities. People age 75 to 84 were 8% of the positive test results and another 30% of the fatalities.
On Wednesday, he said, the state will announce it is deploying a
mobile lab that offers coronavirus testing with results in 45 minutes. It will be used at long-term care facilities.
China
DeSantis said personal protective equipment should be manufactured domestically. PPE is critical for health care workers and first responders, and it has been in short supply and become much more expensive during the pandemic.
“All this stuff should be made in the United States,” he said. The country should not rely on “Communist China” for materials that are so important. He said he wanted to encourage manufacturers to locate plants in Florida.
Dining
DeSantis said he wouldn’t be afraid to eat at restaurants with his families in areas of the state — the 64 counties outside South Florida — that are in Phase 1 reopening and offer outdoor seating with appropriate spacing or indoor seating at no more than 25% of capacity.
He said he’d likely to out to eat soon in Tallahassee.
And, he said, his order that allowed people to get cocktails to go from establishments offering carry-out food service has proven so popular he might ask the Legislature to change the law to make that feature permanent in Florida.