TAMPA, Fla. — About two dozen state-testing sites are closing or transitioning to the control of county health officials by May 28th.
The FEMA vaccination site at the Tampa Greyhound track closed on Tuesday. It was initially slated to shut down at the end of April.
How will this impact people looking for testing or vaccines?
Dr. Eric Feigl-Ding, an epidemiologist with the Federation of American Scientist, says testing is still important. It doesn’t matter what type of test you get, it can be over the counter, just get tested often if you’re not vaccinated.
“Testing does not stop transmission. It just slows transmission. We need vaccinations more than testing. But we do need testing given we still have so many people not vaccinated,” he said.
In Florida, more than 8 million people were fully vaccinated, and another 2 million had the first dose according to the Florida Department of Health’s vaccine report updated Tuesday morning.
Feigl-Ding says keeping state-run testing sites open isn’t necessary right now but could be if variants continue to spread.
“The bottleneck and testing is less of a crisis than what was happening last year in which there was long lines, long delays, there wasn't enough tests,” he said.
“I just hope that political leaders and FEMA are ready to potentially open them back up if there's a surge occurring again because we need to have that ready on standby, just as we have already on standby for hurricanes.”
What about the FEMA vaccination site closing?
“Where we go from here, it really depends because I think the retail pharmacies are there for those who want to get it but they're not going to do the outreach there. FEMA will, but hopefully, we will keep up the pace on convincing people to come in for the vaccine," Feigl-Ding said.
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