UPS to Fly Medications by Drone to Florida Retirement Area (1)

United Parcel Service Inc. will use drones to fill prescriptions for residents of The Villages in Florida, one of the country’s biggest retirement communities, amid a lockdown to halt the coronavirus.

The time-sensitive deliveries from a CVS store about a half mile away are scheduled to begin early May. They will mark the first paid residential deliveries by UPS’s drone unit Flight Forward, which received approval last year to operate under relaxed rules for commercial lightweight unmanned aircraft.

Chairs stacked in a deserted town square in The Villages on March 23.

Photographer: Joe Burbank/Orlando Sentinel/Tribune News Service via Getty Images

The operation will start with drones dropping the prescriptions at a central location and a Flight Forward employee will ferry them ...