Florida Cuts Ties With Quest Diagnostics After Failure To Report Nearly 75K COVID-19 Test Results

The Florida Department of Health and the Florida Division of Emergency Management will be cutting all ties with Quest Diagnostics after Quest’s failure to report nearly 75,000 results dating back to April.

State officials said in a press release that Quest notified all individuals that tested positive of their results and that this batch of test results is a data issue and does not impact the health of individuals or the spread of COVID-19 in Florida.

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

Without the backlog of Quest results, the positivity rate for new cases on August 31, 2020, is 5.9%.