Finger-prick COVID-19 testing coming to Aventura Mall. The method comes with caveats.
A new drive-thru COVID-19 testing site will open Monday at the Aventura Mall, the latest such site to expand testing availability for South Florida residents as the novel coronavirus spreads.
But unlike most drive-thru testing sites in the region, this one will utilize a finger-prick blood sample instead of a nasal swab. That’s despite the fact that, on their own, blood tests are not supposed to be used to diagnose COVID-19, according to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.
The tests provide results fast — in about 15 minutes, said Michel Koopman, the executive vice president of Banyan Medical Systems, which is overseeing the Aventura testing site. They are “just over 90% accurate,” the company says, “which means [it] is possible (small chance) that you test negative and are already in the early stages of being infected.”
Researchers say the blood tests, which can detect the antibodies produced to fight COVID-19, can tell you the likelihood that someone has either recovered from COVID-19 or is suffering from it at the moment.
But because antibodies aren’t produced until after someone contracts the disease, the tests won’t detect the virus in its earliest stages the way a nasal swab would.
“In the early days of an infection when the body’s immune response is still building, antibodies may not be detected,” the FDA says. “This limits the test’s effectiveness for diagnosing COVID-19 and why it should not be used as the sole basis to diagnose COVID-19.”
Miami-Dade County has begun to use blood tests in an effort to plot the local spread of the coronavirus, testing 750 people selected randomly each week.
The city of Aventura announced the new testing site at Aventura Mall to residents in an email Thursday evening, saying it will be open from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday through Friday in the Expansion Parking Garage next to the Apple Store.
Screening and appointments are required before showing up and can be completed through a website set up by Banyan Medical Systems and Pivot Concierge Health, a healthcare clinic based in Omaha, Nebraska. The two companies recently opened a similar drive-thru testing site in Omaha.
The tests are free for those without insurance, Aventura Mayor Enid Weisman said, and otherwise will be covered by people’s insurance companies.
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First responders and people 65 years old and older will be prioritized for appointments, Koopman said, but anyone is eligible and can go to the website — covidaventura.com — for screening.
About 200 tests are available per day. Koopman declined to say how many tests are available in total, but he said the number is in the thousands.
Miami Herald staff writer Douglas Hanks contributed to this report.
