COVID-19 drive-thru testing starts Thursday in Palmetto. It won’t be for everyone

Manatee County is planning to set up a 4-day-long COVID-19 drive-thru testing facility beginning Thursday at the Bradenton Area Convention Center in Palmetto, but testing will be very limited.

Not just anyone will be able show up and get tested, even if they meet the current criteria. Instead, appointments and a prescription from a doctor will be required.

Anyone with a prescription needs to call 941-748-0747 to make an appointment. The site will be open from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. each day.

Those with appointments are told they need to:

• Arrive in a vehicle. No walk-up patients will be seen.
• Remain in their vehicle at all times.
• Present a photo ID and a prescription for specimen collection, written by their health care provider.

The drive-thru facility will not hold future events unless the county gets another delivery of specimen collection kits and PPE, or personal protective equipment, both of which are in high demand.

Manatee County is setting up its first drive-thru testing facility thanks to receiving 600 specimen collection kits that were among those recently sent out by the Florida Division of Emergency Management.

During a county commission meeting Tuesday, Commissioner Vanessa Baugh expressed concern that so few people had been tested for the virus in Manatee County. As of Tuesday morning, there had been 132 people who had been tested. In contrast, Sarasota County had tested 368 people, and Hillsborough County had tested 1,387 people.

“Our specimens collection kits are very low. We will give them out to the hospitals and the rest will be used for our drive-thru testing,” said Jacob Saur, director of the county’s public safety department.

After providing kits to the hospitals and sharing some with Orange County, the Manatee County Health Department was left with 200 kits.

A closed meeting was underway Tuesday afternoon to work out all the logistics of a the drive-thru testing facility, according to Saur. Law enforcement, barricades and hand-washing stations will be part of the set-up.

As of early Tuesday, the plan was to take 50 appointments a day from people who have a prescription or doctor’s order to be tested. In Manatee County, there is already a backlog of people who have orders from their doctors but who have not been tested.

The testing facility will continue to operate until it runs out of the specimen collection kits. It will have to shutdown if the county doesn’t receive more kits and PPE.

“We just don’t when we will receive our next shipment of PPE or collection kits,” Saur said.

This story was originally published March 24, 2020 at 10:24 AM with the headline "COVID-19 drive-thru testing starts Thursday in Palmetto. It won’t be for everyone."