The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has extended the shelf life of up to 1 million rapid COVID-19 tests that had expired in a Florida warehouse.
Earlier this month, Gov. Ron DeSantis’ administration revealed between 800,000 and 1 million Abbott BinaxNOW COVID-19 tests had sat idle in a warehouse and expired in December.
Federal regulators, however, approved a three-month extension, meaning the tests can be used through March.
During a news conference Wednesday, DeSantis announced that the tests were being made available again and would be sent out.
“Different testing centers, different county health [department] people that want them, [they’re] gonna go, but those are not at-home tests, those are older Abbott tests,” DeSantis said.
The governor further explained that the tests come in packs of 40 to be used at authorized testing sites by trained professionals.
The news of the stockpile was first revealed in late December by Florida Agriculture Commissioner Nikki Fried, who is running for the Democratic gubernatorial nomination in the 2022 election.
Fried told ABC News that after seeing long lines for tests last month, her team started calling local health departments to figure out why there were delays in testing. She said an official high up in the governor’s administration eventually told her about the stockpile.
“These are a million tests that should have been distributed to local departments of health, to local communities that needed these tests,” she said. “We knew that omicron was coming to our country and our state and he missed the mark and completely dropped the ball.”
