Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis confirmed that the Food and Drug Administration agreed to extend the expiration date for almost 1 million rapid COVID-19 test kits.
The tests initially expired last September, but the expiration was extended to December before they expired again. The new extension will last for three months.
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“At the end of the summer they expired. The FDA agreed to extend it for three months, but during those three months there was almost zero demand for testing because we had such low COVID prevalence,” he said during a press conference Wednesday. “The Division of Emergency Management had been asking for an extension for a long time.”
The governor noted that the kits were not at-home tests and were designed for testing facilities. He said they will be distributed to different testing centers throughout the state.
The state had between 800,000 and 1 million rapid test kits from Abbott Laboratories that expired between Dec. 26 and Dec. 30, Kevin Guthrie, director of the Florida Division of Emergency Management, said during a press conference last week.
DeSantis faced criticism for the expired tests from his 2022 gubernatorial challenger Nikki Fried. Fried, a Democrat who currently serves as the Florida Commissioner of Agriculture, said the expired tests showed “a complete failure” on DeSantis’s part and proved he was “not fit to serve,” Florida Politics reported.
The FDA agreed to extend the expiration date after the manufacturer was able to prove the kits would remain stable after 15 months at room temperature, according to documents obtained by WFTS reporter Forrest Saunders.
Florida gets the green light to extend the shelf-life of about 1 million unused COVID test kits the state had stockpiled. pic.twitter.com/DDgHBZgH7E
— Forrest Saunders (@FBSaunders) January 11, 2022
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Last week, DeSantis announced that the state will distribute 1 million free at-home COVID-19 test kits to Florida seniors. Like many states, Florida is currently experiencing its largest wave of COVID-19 cases due to the onset of the omicron variant.
The state reported a record 150,251 cases on Jan. 4, according to data from Johns Hopkins University. Since then, reported cases have begun to trend downward. The state reported 71,742 cases on Wednesday.
