Questions continue about expired COVID tests in Florida

MIAMI – As South Floridians waited in hours-long testing lines ahead of the Christmas holiday, nearly a million tests were sitting in a state warehouse.

Florida’s director of emergency management said it was between 800,000 and 1 million rapid test kits that have since expired.

“We received a three-month extension on those test kits, which ended up expiring between Dec. 26th and Dec. 30th,” Kevin Guthrie said. “We tried to give them out beforehand, but there was no demand for it.”

Yet the kits expired after a Dec. 21 letter penned by Miami-Dade County’s mayor to the state’s surgeon general asking “that all possible tests be directed to Miami-Dade County to meet the growing demand for testing in our community.”

University of Massachusetts medical school Dr. Nate Hafer says for those who choose to get tested, options include antigen tests and PCR’s.

“The thing with this pandemic from the start is that people can be contagious before they have symptoms,” he said. “Both of these tests are very accurate. That is the reason they are out in the market and authorized by the FDA.”

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Hafer says PCR’s are a better option when you first face an exposure risk.

“Because the PCR test is amplifying the genetic material, it is usually sensitive enough to detect the virus and the infection early on,” he said.

At-home antigens work well, he says, when you are showing symptoms and when testing toward the end of infection.

“Because the PCR test is so sensitive, it could be picking up small amounts of genetic material from the virus long after you are contagious, up to weeks after the infection, whereas the antigen test, once that infection is cleared and you are not really contagious anymore, it is going to be negative,” Hafer said.