Central Floridians as young as five years of age with symptoms of coronavirus can use a special lane to get tested at the Orange County Convention Center starting Friday.
500 tests can be performed in this lane on a daily basis.
Families and individuals who use the lane for symptomatic people will perform their own self-administered swab test under the supervision of a registered nurse.
Spokesperson Mike Jachles says the lane will reduce wait times and speed up results.
“And then with the collection process, it’s a very fast process. It’s a swab that goes into the nose but it doesn’t go all the way up like the active virus swabs that we’re doing. It only goes in the nose a portion of the way, so it’s much more tolerable especially with small children.”
[audio wav="https://www.wmfe.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/mike-clip-one.wav"][/audio]
Jachles says results will be processed at a different lab than the standard coronavirus and antibody tests and will be available electronically within 72 hours.
“The parents will be swabbing the small children ages five and up, so we need children to come with their parents or legal guardians and all adults must have a valid photo ID.”
[audio wav="https://www.wmfe.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/13005_LANE_DANIELLE.wav"][/audio]
Self-swabbing testing lanes will also open in Jacksonville, Fort Lauderdale and Miami Gardens Friday.
More than 75,000 tests have been performed at the OCCC site to date. The site is open from 9 am until 5 pm daily, seven days a week.
Pre-registerto use the symptomatic lane here.
If you'd like to listen to this story, click on the clips above.
