Florida is cutting ties with Quest after the company tried to ditch 75,000 old covid test results

The Florida health department is ‘severing all ties’ with Quest Diagnostics after officials discovered that the testing giant has not reported the results of nearly 75,000 coronavirus tests since April.

Among the 75,000 old test results, 3,870 were positives, but most of these were more than two weeks old.

Quest reported the results to health care providers and patients, so those who tested positive knew their status, although the state did not, according to a statement from the company.

“The law requires all COVID-19 results to be reported to DOH in a timely manner,” Governor Rick DeSantis said in a statement Tuesday.

“It’s irresponsible to drop so much useless and outdated data.”

Quest’s data dump resulted in an additional 7,643 new cases to the Florida census on Tuesday, although only 3,773 of those were truly new, the health department said.

If the outdated Quest tests were included, Florida’s positivity rate would now be 6.8 percent.

Without the Quest data, the positivity rate – while still quite high – is a more modest 5.9 percent.

The 75,000 tests for which Quest returned results late on Monday evening were mostly about two weeks old, although some came from samples taken nearly five months ago.

“ Quest’s failure to report nearly 75,000 results dating back to April means that most of the data in today’s upload – while it will be of historical significance – will have little impact on the status of today’s pandemic, ” wrote the Florida Department of Health Tuesday. statement.

A total of 631,040 people have now tested positive for COVID-19 in Florida, including the 3,870 whose test results were finally reported by Quest last night.

As of Tuesday, 11,518 people diagnosed in Florida have died.

The number of cases surged in the Southern state in June and July as it became the third worst hit state in the US, behind only California and Texas.

Importantly, Quest claims there were no delays in reporting the results to the subjects tested, offering a ray of hope that those who tested positive would have stayed home and isolated themselves so as not to infect others.

However, without the knowledge of the state, their contacts would not have been formally traced and tested.

Insufficient testing and backlog of results have hindered the US – and Florida in particular – to respond to the pandemic, which has received widespread criticism from health experts.

This is not the first major COVID-19 datagaf to hit Florida.

The state was criticized in May for failing to include people who died in Florida but whose primary residence was elsewhere in the death toll.

Both local and federal officials have been deferred from investigations in recent weeks as the number of new cases and the daily positivity rate in Florida have declined.

The disclosure of unreported Quest data somewhat undermines that progress.

According to the testing giant, it was responsible for 1.4 million of the 4,682,883 diagnoses administered in the state.

Thus, the 75,000 previously missing results account for more than five percent of the tests performed by Quest in Florida, and about 1.6 percent of all tests performed in Florida.

“Quest Diagnostics takes our responsibility seriously to report laboratory data to public health authorities in a timely manner to help respond to a pandemic,” Quest said in a statement.

“Due to a technical issue, our reporting of a subset of COVID-19 public health test data to the Florida Department of Health has been delayed … We apologize for this matter and regret the challenge it poses to Florida public health authorities.” The problem has since been solved. ‘

Nevertheless, Governor DeSantis has cut the state’s ties with the diagnostics company completely.

“I believe Quest has relinquished their ability to perform a testing function in Florida that the people can rely on,” he said.

“As such, I order all executive agencies to immediately sever their COVID-19 testing relationships with Quest.”