As people across the U.S. continue to scramble to find COVID-19 tests with cases surging, close to 1 million unused rapid test kits expired in a Florida warehouse last month, a top state official said Thursday.
- The stockpile sat during the fall when cases fell in Florida and demand was low.
- The kits expired the week after Christmas, just as a new wave of coronavirus cases hit from the highly contagious Omicron variant.
- The Florida Department of Emergency Management did not immediately respond to CNN when asked if the state had considered sharing the tests with other states before they expired.
- The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services also did not say if there was a national protocol for redistributing unused tests.
- Should Florida have shared the unused tests?
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