State unveils new Home Depot testing site as 1,212 test positive for COVID-19

Image via AP.

As Gov. Ron DeSantis visited Boca Raton Friday to unveil a new Home Depot-based COVID-19 testing site and announce five others, state health officials reported 1,212 new cases of the disease.

In total, 54,497 people have tested positive for COVID-19 in the state.

The administration announced the six testing options, to be split between Home Depot and Publix, as convenient options for shoppers as they stock up with during the hurricane preparedness sales-tax holiday. The five locations outside of Boca Raton will be announced in the coming days, but will likely be in South Florida.

“Accessible COVID-19 testing statewide has been a top priority of my administration during the state’s response to COVID-19,” DeSantis said. “Our private-sector partners have been a vital component of the state’s COVID-19 response.”

Each of these test sites will be able to conduct up to 100 tests per day, down from the standard 400 at the state’s major sites that have gone mostly unused. Tests will go to Quest Diagnostics, one of the state’s major private testing partners, and results will be available within five to seven days.

CVS already has 77 privately-operated sites while Walgreens and Walmart have nine each.

The Department of Health also reported 49 fatalities, raising the state’s death toll to 2,495. And 10,243 people have been hospitalized with the disease in Florida after an additional 187 were confirmed hospitalized since Thursday’s report.

That day, the state crossed 10,000 hospitalizations. As of Friday, 9,982 Florida residents have been hospitalized.

In nursing homes and other long-term care facilities, 1,198 residents and staff have died, an increase of 35.

The Department of Health has now received test results from 984,160 individuals after receiving tests from 40,966 people Thursday.

Both Friday and Thursday’s reports, released each morning, cover results received that day, when 1,236 tested positive. That makes for a 3.19% positivity rate among people who were not already identified as positive cases.

Ten counties have recorded more than 1,000 cases, but the majority of cases still come from the state’s virus hot spots in Miami-Dade, Broward and Palm Beach counties.

Since Thursday’s report, 245 people in Miami-Dade County have tested positive, raising the overall COVID-19 caseload there to 17,641 people. Of the 49 deaths statewide, 16 were tied to the county, raising its death toll to 696.

Broward County registered 105 new cases, raising its total to 6,975, and the death toll rose to 329 after one new person was confirmed dead. Palm Beach County now has 5,765 cases after DOH showed 224 new reports and eight deaths, now with 347 total.

The seven other counties with more than 1,000 COVID-19 cases are Hillsborough with 2,069, Orange with 1,945, Lee with 1,847, Duval with 1,561, Collier with 1,454, Pinellas with 1,238 and Manatee with 1,022. Polk County is the next-closest to crossing that threshold, now with 977 cases.

DeSantis also again touted the state’s mobile testing van, the only one of its kind in the country. The Governor said that van, which has been mainly used to test long-term care facilities and homeless populations, drew the attention of the White House physician when the state used it to test people around President Donald Trump ahead of the intended SpaceX launch Wednesday.

“The White House physician was so impressed with it he went in and got the schematics, or asked for the schematics, was taking notes,” he said. “They’re going to recommend that every state do something like we did with outfitting this RV.”