Video Showing Huge Queue in Florida for COVID Tests Goes Viral as Omicron Hits U.S.

Aerial footage of long lines at a Florida drive-thru COVID-19 testing site has gone viral, as cases of the virus continue to surge in the state.

The clip, posted on social media via local station NBC 6 South Florida, showed huge lines of vehicles outside a Florida testing site.

"This video from @nbc6 in Miami, FL is of a drive-thru COVID testing site. It is from today. It is not from last year," MSNBC's Jesse Rodriguez wrote on Twitter, sharing the clip.

The footage, which has been viewed more than 1.3 million times at the time of writing, shows bumper-to-bumper traffic stretching into the distance.

It comes as Florida reported 6,381 COVID-19 cases and 117 death on Thursdays—the highest daily increase since September.

Hospitals in Miami-Dade have been ordered to report daily COVID-19 numbers after Mayor Daniella Levine Cava moved to reimpose an emergency order amid concerns over the Omicron variant.

Beginning Friday, hospitals will be required to report how many COVID-19 patients are in intensive care units, how many vaccinations are administered, and the number of available ventilators.

"We're doing everything possible to make sure we're responding to this," the mayor said.

The order had only been lifted in November as the number of COVID-19 cases in the county was following a downward trend.

Although few cases of the Omicron variant have been reported in the state, officials say that the variant has been found in wastewater sampling sites in Orange County this week.

Orange County Utilities spokesperson Sarah Lux told The Associated Press that sampling showed that the new highly infectious variant represented almost all of the strains in the samples from the wastewater facilities.

However, Orange County Mayor Jerry Demings said on Wednesday that those who are hospitalized with COVID-19 currently are "being primarily infected by the Delta variant."

Since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, Florida has reported more than 62,000 deaths.

Elsewhere, COVID-19 testing sites are seeing hours-long wait times, with results taking between two and 10 days.

People have lined up for hours at COVID-19 testing sites in New York City, while at Rhode Island's McCoy Stadium, the largest testing site in the state, COVID-19 testing is up 30 percent and turnaround times can be delayed up to 72 hours.

"The testing landscape is still not where we need it to be at a time when we need testing to be ramped up and widely available with quick turnaround times," Keri Althoff, a professor of epidemiology at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, told CBS News. "There has to be broader testing availability regardless of income or where you are located."