Orange County mayor says state leaders not providing enough COVID-19 test kits

ORANGE COUNTY, Fla. — Orange County Mayor Jerry Demings said the state has not provided adequate test kits for the county.

In a one-on one interview with WFTV investigative reporter Daralene Jones, Demings said it's forced county officials to try and order kits on their own, only to hit roadblocks that have left the county at a disadvantage to know if the curve here is really flattening.

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Demings said the federal or state governments have siphoned off the existing supply, leaving them in control of which cities and counties get these tests.

The mayor said Orange County finally received a very small batch of the tests it requested from the state last week, and they had to be returned because they weren't approved.

This week, the Orange County Health Department is offering coronavirus testing in five new locations across the county.

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Nurses will be staged at a new site every day, in an effort to reach underserved communities that haven't had easy access to testing.

Demings said the problem with expanding testing beyond this is not staff, but collection kits.

“Daily, I look at what we have requested from the state of Florida in the way of collection kits to come into our area and we're very short,” Demings said. “So, you know, the governor has these press conferences and he talks about all the people being tested and the collection kits being distributed, but quite frankly, we have not gotten enough into our area.”

Demings said the county on its own has requested 15,000 test kits from the state.

It received 5,000 last week, but they weren’t approved and had to be sent back.

The vast majority of testing in Orange County had been happening at the Orange County Convention Center.

A location not easily accessible to low income residents living in communities where venturing outside of their ZIP code isn’t always the easiest or most convenient thing to do.

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And consider this, some of them are working the "essential" jobs putting them at risk of the virus they can't even get tested for.

“We have looked at our options to go at it ourselves and try to purchase from providers directly,” Demings said. “But when we have done that we see the federal government through FEMA, through the state, Florida Department of Emergency Management siphon off the existing supply.”

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