LIVE OAK, Fla. — For three weeks in February, the Scott family was terrified and had no answers.

Allison Scott was admitted to the hospital on Feb. 9 and remained there for 19 days as doctors could not figure out what was causing his nagging cough, kidney problems and heart condition.

Now, the Scott family, though, believes they have their answer. Jeff Scott, owner of Cheek and Scott Pharmacy, said a point of care antibody test shows his father tested positive for the COVID-19 coronavirus antibodies.

“I guess in going through that with my dad and not understanding what was going on to now understanding much more and now actually having a point of care test,” Jeff Scott said. “Our goal is to help the healthcare workers get back to work.

“It is severe. And if people have severe underlying things, it can be real serious and take their life.”

It was so severe in Allison Scott’s case that Jeff Scott said they reached out to family members to let them know that if they wanted to see him again, they should come to the hospital.

“To see the horror of my children that came from Georgia and all around to look at him and think, ‘Wow. This is super serious,’” Jeff Scott said. “The doctors told us they did every test and there was no clinical reason for him to be coughing like this and to be under this amount of duress and they don’t understand it.”

The Scott family isn’t alone.

Jeff Scott said he tested 25 individuals, mostly health care workers from Suwannee and Hamilton counties that had been sick in the early part of this year — one as far back as late December — and 24 returned positive for the antibodies. Those workers all had symptoms ranging from severe headaches to a nagging, unproductive cough to a fever to a mysterious severe sore throat to the loss of taste and smell to sinus infections.

In addition to testing those previously sick workers, Jeff Scott said one of the rapid response tests (a result is given within 10 to 15 minutes) was administered to one of the county’s confirmed cases.

Jeff Scott said it alerted to a positive IGM result, indicating the person’s body was still developing the antibodies, or still fighting the active virus.

The test, which requires a finger prick to obtain a drop of blood, also can give a positive result for both IGM and IGG antibodies, which means that while you’ve developed antibodies, a person isn’t fully clear of the virus and should remain isolated. Or it could give just a positive for the IGG antibodies, which means the virus has already passed.

“The IGG, which says, ‘Hey I have the antibodies. It looks like I built immunity, we don’t the level of immunity that it builds but more than likely I will not be reinfected,’” Jeff Scott said.

And that’s where all of those healthcare workers that had been previously sick were testing.

That was exciting to Jeff Scott, who said he could see a difference in doctors and nurses from when they approached him for the test and after they received the result.

In fact, he said one physician had closed his office for a “corona vacation,” but after receiving a positive test, the doctor took off his mask and decided to reopen his office and get back to work.

“The countenance of his face and the whole staff, all the nurses rushed in to see how they could get tested, it’s an exciting thing,” he said. “From closing his office to let’s go back to work. That’s so exciting.”

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis also was excited about the possibilities of the antibody testing Saturday during a press briefing. Desalts said testing done in California involving antibody testing had produced valuable results about the number of people who had the antibodies compared to the number of positive test results.

DeSantis said that information would be valuable in Florida as well and while test kits are supposed to be available soon in the state, he was also working with blood donation companies to screen those samples for the antibodies.

“It is important to know if the people that test positive are really a small fraction of the people who’ve actually had the virus,” he said.

Kerry Waldron, the administrator of health in Suwannee County, said it could be a valuable tool in understanding the spread of the virus. However, he said it doesn’t replace the validity of the testing that is currently being done with samples coming from throat swabs.

“The CDC and the Department of Health, we haven’t deployed that testing yet,” Waldron said. “It alerts you that you potentially have been exposed or had exposure and you potentially could have built up an immune system. But it’s not a guarantee that you have.”

Jeff Scott said they had spent several weeks researching and searching for the tests and were able to obtain the small number of tests. The Food and Drug Administration has since released it so that all licensed pharmacists can administer the test, although the tests, themselves, are still being held up with the manufacturers.

Cheek and Scott, though, is receiving another shipment of the tests, with a couple hundred expected to be on hand.

Jeff Scott said it’s just one way of trying to help out the community.

“One of the things I’ve been thinking about and I would go down in history saying is, we’ve got to take this serious,” he said. “And it is real. But also, there’s hope. We think things are going to get better more quickly than people believe. I’ve seen it change the countenance of a whole medical facility just from them knowing, ‘Hey, I’ve had it and I beat it. So now let me really go focus on the people that are sick because I’m not going to have a problem. I can take care of them.’”