Florida Delays Saturday COVID-19 Update After Lab Submits 400K Previously Reported Test Results

October 11, 2020

The Florida Department of Health did not issue a daily COVID-19 update on Saturday – the first time in nearly seven months – after a big problem with a private lab.

About six hours after the report is typically issued, the FDH said in a press release that Saturday’s COVID-19 reports will be delayed until Sunday.

“Last night, the Department of Health received approximately 400,000 previously-reported COVID-19 test results from Helix Laboratory – a private lab that is not affiliated with the state of Florida,” FDOH said in a press release. “The massive size of the data file and the need to de-duplicate hundreds of thousands of results prevented the Department of Health’s automatic reporting system from processing yesterday’s results as it normally does.”

“State epidemiologists are currently working to reconcile the data, which will take a day to finish,” the statement continued.

The department of health said the reporting issue is not related to notifying individuals about their results because that task is completed by the lab or entity that offered the test.

Saturday was not the first big problem the state has had with a testing laboratory.  In September, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis fired Quest Diagnostics after Quest’s failure to follow Florida law and report all COVID-19 results in a timely manner. Quest failed to report nearly 75,000 results dating back to April before dumping into the system all at one time.

Comments

3 Responses to “Florida Delays Saturday COVID-19 Update After Lab Submits 400K Previously Reported Test Results”

  1. Jordan on October 11th, 2020 3:44 pm

    Well, we do know that the lady (Rebekah Jones) that “created” the dashboard either quit or got fired when she claimed that Florida was under counting the exact number of cases.
    ” . . .has asserted that the state’s site undercounts the state’s infection total and overcounts the number of people tested in an effort to make the case for reopening the economy sooner”
    Just a thought.

  2. mq on October 11th, 2020 2:14 pm

    @ Denny
    Sure hope so.

    Basically, who really knows what the real numbers are…..
    Federal, State, or Local.

  3. Denny on October 11th, 2020 11:32 am

    So DeSantis fired Quest for dumping 75,000 tests into the system. Is he going to fire Helix for dumping 400,000?

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