During a news conference Monday afternoon, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis announced there are efforts being made to bring antigen tests into the state as it reaches over 41,000 COVID-19 cases since partially reopening last week.
Antigen tests were newly approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. It works by rapidly testing to see if there are proteins found on or within COVID-19, according to the FDA.
These tests come back within 15 minutes, DeSantis said.
"We still think it's something that's important, so we are going to be working to bringing as many as we can to the state of Florida," he said.
This week marks the second week since the governor rolled out his reopening plan with phase one, which allowed restaurants and retailers to reopen with 25 percent partial compacity.
On Monday, hair and nail salons, as well as barbershops were allowed to reopen with 25 percent compacity.
He said phase one did not see "much change going on."
"You have had retail open, now you have more," he said. "Small steps to return to normal, not a huge seat change."
DeSantis said what the biggest "seat change" was in phase one was bringing back elective procedures to medical centers. He said, for example, health-related issues lowered at medical facilities due to the pandemic.
"These problems didn't disappear," he said. "People were scared to go into the medical facilities... If you need medical attention, [medical facilities] is the safe place to be."
According to the Florida Department of Health, as of Monday morning's report, Florida is reporting 40,982 cases of COVID-19, which is up 386 cases since Sunday's report. Fourteen more people have also died, bringing the state's total to 1,735.