DeSantis, DOH sever ties with Quest Diagnostics
Florida severed its ties with Quest Diagnostics on Tuesday at the direction of Gov. Ron DeSantis “after Quest’s failure to follow Florida law and report all COVID-19 results in a timely manner,” the Department of Health said in a news release.
Quest is one of the largest private providers of testing in the state since the pandemic began, with over 841,000 tests taken and processed in its Tampa lab alone. Laboratory Corporation of America, is first, with over 914,000 tests.
According to the DOH, Quest failed to report nearly 75,000 results dating back to April.
“To drop this much unusable and stale data is irresponsible,” DeSantis said in the news release. “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.”
Quest released a statement on its website explaining that the delay was caused by a technical issue that has since been resolved, and affected only a subset of 75,000 of the 1.4 million COVID-19 tests it had performed and reported to state officials.
“We apologize for this matter and regret the challenge it poses for public health authorities in Florida,” the company said in a news release. “Importantly, the issue did not affect or delay reporting of test results to providers and patients.”
The company said it has has provided more COVID-19 testing on behalf of the citizens of Florida than any other lab, and is still in a good position to continue to help patients and assist with the public health response.
“We remain open to working with the state Department of Health to provide testing that meets the needs required for patient care and public health response,” the company said.
The company has conducted 13.2 million diagnostic tests nationwide.
The decision comes a day after DeSantis brought President Donald Trump’s new medical adviser, Dr. Scott
Atlas, to the state to talk about cutting back on the testing of people who are asymptomatic, among other things.
It also comes at a time when testing has dropped significantly across Florida, as much as 30% since its high point. The Department of Health did not immediately respond to requests for additional information.
The vast majority of testing conducted by Quest is at private sites. After the order by DeSantis, it will no longer be used at state-supported testing sites, said Jason Mahon, spokesman for the Division of Emergency Management.
The state uses several other labs at state-supported testing sites, Mahon said. Having other labs step in to replace Quest at those sites shouldn’t be a problem, he said.
The backlog in reporting is more of a data concern than a public health issue since Quest notified everyone who tested positive in a timely manner, the DOH said.
The Governor’s Office was alerted that 75,000 tests dating to April were going into the state’s COVID-19 monitoring system Tuesday. Most of the data are 2 weeks old, but some numbers date to five months ago.
The state incorporated information that would be useful and included the rest in the interest of transparency.
Because of the backlog, the state saw a one-day spike in new cases from 1,868 Monday to 7,643 Tuesday.
Without the backlog of Quest results, the positivity rate for new cases on Aug. 31 would be 5.9%, the DOH said. With the backlog, it’s 6.8%.
Cindy Prins, assistant dean for educational affairs at the University of Florida College of Public Health and Health Professions, said it is critical to get results to the state as quickly as possible to conduct contact tracing and identify others who haven’t been tested to prevent spread of COVID-19.