Volusia County Fairgrounds COVID testing site closed

There is a dropping demand for COVID-19 testing across Florida. The slowdown has prompted the closing of one major testing site at the Volusia County Fairgrounds.

DELAND, Fla. - COVID-19 testing sites around Central Florida are seeing so much less traffic, that some are starting to close down.

Volusia County announced Tuesday that the site at its fairgrounds in DeLand would close. The site opened this year as a regular testing site before transitioning to giving out take-home COVID-19 tests. The county says, in about two weeks, it handed out 8,000 kits. But now, like other areas, they’re not seeing the same demand.

The testing site in Orlando’s Barnett Park looked like a ghost town Tuesday. About a month ago, cars snaked around the park and some waited hours just to get a test.

Near its closing time on Tuesday, there were three cars at the Camping World Stadium site. One woman told FOX 35 she was there to get tested before an international flight.

"It was very quick," said Viane Firreira. "No lines, no cars. I was very surprised because I was thinking there was too many people waiting."

Even the once highly sought-after at-home COVID test seems easy to find now. Some pharmacies now have fully stocked shelves.

"It doesn’t really surprise me that people aren’t going to get tested, because there are fewer people feeling sick," said Dr. Todd Husty.

Cases across the country and in Florida are continuing to go down. Husty said it’s possible we could see another variant and another peak down the road, but it’s hard to know for sure just yet.

"What we learned from the Omicron peak is that we’ve had another peak, we’ve had previous peaks, previous times that we thought we were doing great," Husty said. "I don’t want to sound any alarms because I like where we’re at, but we don’t know exactly where we’re at."

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