Florida Department of Health to cut ties with Quest Diagnostics over unreported Covid test data
September 1, 2020 - Governor Ron DeSantis has issued an order for the Florida Department of Health to sever its ties with Quest Diagnostics after discovering the lab had failed to report 75,000 Covid-19 tests from as far back as April. "The law requires all Covid-19 tests to be reported to the Florida Department of Health in a timely manner," he said in a statement. "To drop this much unusable and stale data is irresponsible." Without the backlog of Quest results, the positivity rate for new cases on August 31 is 5.9 percent; with Quest results, that number increases to 6.8 percent. Quest officials said that all individuals who tested positive for the virus were notified of their results.