JACKSONVILLE, Fla. – The holidays and omicron variant are causing a spike in COVID-19 testing and cases across Northeast Florida.
Many testing sites reopened Monday after closing down for several days because of the Christmas holiday. The locations had lines building before they opened.
Duval County’s beaches drive-thru testing site, at the former Kmart in Neptune Beach, had a long line before 7 a.m. Monday. By 1 p.m., it reached capacity, with the contracted staff at Telescope Health doling out more than 325 PCR and rapid tests.
Staff said people wanting COVID-19 tests should come early Tuesday morning.
News4JAX visited the city-run Emmett Reed, Lane Wiley and Cuba Hunter community centers on Monday. All were busy with a surge in demand for COVID-19 testing across the area. More details about capacities and pre-registration are available at JaxReady.com.
LIST: COVID-19 testing sites in Northeast Florida
“Availability for testing is always helpful, is always good,” said Dr. Jonathan Kantor with the Penn Center for Global Health. “Having people even have the peace of mind to be able to go and get tested, I think is helpful.”
With long lines at those government-run sites, many people are opting to go the private testing route. That includes pharmacies, doctor’s offices and urgent care centers like Avecina Medical. Doctors there said most people’s insurance covers the tests, so they don’t have to pay out of pocket.
However, getting an appointment can take patience.
“It takes less interaction, less amount of virus to get individuals sick,” said Doctor Saman Soleymani, co-founder of Avecina Medical.
He said his company’s staff is seeing record numbers at their six clinics in Duval, St. Johns and Clay counties. On Monday, he said, more than four out of 10 people who take COVID-19 tests are positive, showing that the omicron variant is extremely contagious.
“We know that vaccination isn’t 100% successful preventing you from catching the virus or passing it along,” Soleymani said. “So the best thing to do is to test, so if you test someone and identify them early, then those individuals can remove themselves from the population.”
He also said he’s seeing cases of reinfection, where people who’ve recovered from the coronavirus are getting it again. However, he noted with his patients, deaths and serious illnesses are low.
The good news is early research suggests omicron may cause milder illnesses than past strains, like the first generation and the delta variant. Kantor said he’s seen the omicron variant present itself with mild symptoms like those of a cold.
“There are a couple things that are feeding into the mildness of the symptoms of omicron. Right, there’s one factor, which is potentially that the virus itself, for a lot of people, may lead to more mild symptoms,” Kantor said. “The other is that so many people have either been vaccinated or been infected in the past that these are all breakthrough infections, and typically breakthrough infections, in general, are going to be milder.”
Soleymani said people need to be extra careful to not spread the coronavirus. They should isolate at the first sign of symptoms and schedule a test as soon as possible. He said that will cut down on community spread.
“I feel like this is going to be just like last year,” Soleymani noted. “Holidays, people getting together, New Year’s — there’s always some lag, and those people that are getting infected are going to pass it along to other people.”