DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. – Testing sites across Central Florida are seeing long lines as the holidays wrap up and the omicron variant of COVID-19 continues surging throughout the state.
On Monday, two spots in Orange County were forced to close early after hitting capacity, appointments were booked up for the next few days at Seminole County’s new site, and along the coast, long lines were spotted at Daytona International Speedway’s pop-up site.
Some at the Speedway, which requires appointments, told News 6 they were still waiting in line for up to three hours and they were there for a mix of reasons.
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“Just trying to be cautious and be on the safe side. With this new variant out there, you just never know,” Jerome McCoy said.
McCoy said for his family, getting tested at the pop-up site wasn’t too difficult but others called the process this week a nightmare.
“We had a flight back for [Monday]. We got tested on Friday to try to give as much time for the results while also staying within the 72-hour window and we still don’t have our results,” Tyler said, another testing customer.
With no results, Tyler and his friend Emily couldn’t board their flight back home to Canada and said they were stuck driving back.
“It’s been a really disheartening process and the fact that we booked an appointment and now the line is all the way at the end, it’s just the cherry on top,” Emily said.
The health department in Volusia County said it’s seeing the biggest surge in cases since the beginning of the pandemic.
“Our case rate is around 713 or 714 cases per 100,000 population which is the highest it’s ever been. Seven times higher than what’s considered the ‘high threshold’” health department spokesperson Ethan Johnson said.
Johnson said to expect some delays in results right now. He said the issue isn’t the test kit supply but the number of tests being processed. He said they’re testing more than they ever have before.
“Here at the health department we are expanding our capacity as much as we can to do on-site testing but it is still pretty limited,” he said.