HOLLYWOOD, FLA. (WSVN) - The Florida Department of Health and the Florida Division of Emergency Management announced they have severed ties with Quest Diagnostics due to their failure of reporting COVID-19 test results in a timely manner.
On Tuesday morning, under the direction of Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, the departments cut their ties with the lab.
“This is the most egregious dump we’ve had,” DeSantis said. “They dumped like 75,000 test results dating back to April, and so it’s like, ‘OK, you’re required to put this in, and you do it now in this big dump?'”
According to the state, Quest Diagnostics failed to report nearly 75,000 COVID-19 test results dating as far back as April.
The daily numbers released by the FDOH each day at around 11 a.m. were updated late, which may be a result of what the department fears would be skewed by the lab results that were not reported in a timely manner.
In a press release, state officials said, “Most of the data in today’s upload – while it will have historical significance – will have little impact on the status of the pandemic today.”
FDOH officials said without the Quest backlog data, the positivity rate reported on Tuesday would be at 5.9% instead of 6.8%. New cases would be totaled at 3,773 instead of 7,643.
“I think anyone should take today’s results and just put them aside because most of those were not recent results,” DeSantis said. “To drop this much unusable and stale data is irresponsible.”
Quest officials said all individuals who tested positive for the coronavirus were notified of their test results. The data from Quest is said to be mostly two weeks old but some are almost five months old.
In a statement, the company said the problem is connected to a technical issue, and that it “involves nearly 75,000 of the approximately 1.4 million COVID-19 tests. The issue did not affect or delay reporting of test results to providers and patients.”
The governor said the state is working with enough labs to prevent any shortcomings by the ended partnership.
“We’ve had more success with some of the more upstart labs in terms of their turnaround times, so I think that there’s a lot of options there,” DeSantis said.
Quest said despite the ended partnership, they are still willing to work with the state and the health department during the pandemic.
Anyone with questions and concerns about the coronavirus can call the Florida Department of Health’s 24-hour hotline at 1-866-779-6121.
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