OOPS

Florida: ‘Unforeseen Technical Issue’ and Not Lab Was Behind COVID-19 Snafu

The state initially claimed a lab dumped 400,000 duplicative test results. It was wrong.

Florida officials blamed a data snafu that led to a delay on reporting new COVID-19 cases on a lab—but has since backed off and said it was due to an “unforeseen technical issue.” The state initially claimed that Helix Laboratory had dumped 400,000 test results, many of which had already been counted, requiring it to separate out the duplicates. Florida now says “this was not the fault of Helix or the Department of Health,” although it didn’t identify the actual culprit. “We are working with technical experts to ensure this does not happen with subsequent data submissions,” health officials said in a statement this week.

Editor’s Note: This has been updated to reflect that Florida officials have walked back their claim that Helix Laboratory was responsible for the duplicated results.