Florida Fires Quest Labs Over Coronavirus Reporting Failure

The Florida Department of Health (DOH) and the Florida Division of Emergency Management announced on September 1, 2020, they will be severing all ties with Quest Diagnostics after Quest’s failure to follow Florida law and report all COVID-19 test results in a timely manner. Quest’s failure to report nearly 75,000 results dating back to April 2020 means 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.'

Without the backlog of Quest results, the positivity rate for new coronavirus cases in Florida on August 31, 2020, is 5.9%, reported the DOH. With the additional data from Quest, the rate is now 6.8%.

Florida Governor DeSantis said in a press 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."

Quest Diagnostics is a nationwide lab that provides testing services at private sites, as well as performing limited testing through the state of Florida.