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The Florida Department of Health has cut all ties with Quest Diagnostics after the state says the company did not report nearly 75,000 Covid-19 test results dating back to April.
The Department of Health said the move was at the direction of Gov. Ron DeSantis. Quest told the state that “all individuals that tested positive were notified of their results.”
“While significant, this unacceptable dump of test results is a data issue and does not impact the health of individuals or the spread of COVID-19 in Florida,” the department stated in a statement
“The law requires all COVID-19 results to be reported to DOH in a timely manner. To drop this much unusable and stale data is irresponsible. I believe that Quest has abdicated their ability to perform a testing function in Florida that the people can be confident in. As such I am directing all executive agencies to sever their COVID-19 testing relationships with Quest effective immediately,” DeSantis said in the statement.
Quest Diagnostics acknowledged the delay in its own statement, saying in part, “Quest Diagnostics takes seriously our responsibility to report laboratory data to public health authorities in a timely manner to aid pandemic response.”
“Due to a technical issue, our reporting of a subset of public health COVID-19 test data to the Florida Department of Health was delayed. This subset involves nearly 75,000 of the approximately 1.4 million COVID-19 tests we have performed and reported to the state,” the statement added.
Quest Diagnostics apologized “for this matter” and went on to say that it regretted “the challenge it poses for public health authorities in Florida.”
The statement said that the issue had been resolved.
