South Florida lab under investigation for holding on to thousands of COVID test results
MIAMI, Fl. — The Florida Department of Health is investigating a private lab in Miami after it reported more than 14,000 COVID-19 test results in a single day, more than 4,400 of which were positive.
The "data dump" inflated the Miami Dade county and state positivity rate, and raised questions about lab oversight and reliability.
Niznik Lab Corp, also known as NLC Labs, reported COVID-19 test results to the state department of health for the first time this week.
The lab had apparently been collecting test results since mid-June, and reported seven-weeks worth of results all at once.
Lab CEO Humberto Buniotto sent CBS12 News the following statement:
We are committed to serving the State of Florida in its efforts to respond to the COVID-19 crisis. As a Florida-based company run by Floridians, we are particularly honored to step up and serve our home community, Miami-Dade County.
While we initially experienced technical issues with data integration, we worked closely with State officials to correct our processes. As of last night, this has been remedied and data will now be reported daily.
We are in full compliance with State requirements and remain steadfast in our commitment to provide rapid turnaround to all of our patients within less than 36 hours from testing.
Labs are supposed to report new results to the state each day.
According to the DOH, the lab in question informed patients of their results in a timely manner, but failed to properly report the results to the state.
Governor DeSantis addressed the issue in a press conference Thursday.
"Many of those 'cases' were from the end of June and the beginning of July," Gov. DeSantis said. "If you didn't know that, you'd think 'Oh man, Miami Dade has all these new cases. Actually those are old cases."
Jon Taylor, a PhD candidate at Florida Atlantic University and a co-creator of FAU's COVID Tracker, first noticed the data dump when he was uploading information to his tracker Wednesday morning.
"I knew that something was up," he said. "I noticed that Miami Dade reported almost three times the number of positive results that they had over the past two weeks."
Upon closer examination, he saw the Niznik Lab was responsible for many of those positive results.
"It skewed the overall positivity rate for the state of Florida by almost four percentage points," Taylor said.
Finance Professor Dr. Rebel Cole is working with Taylor on the FAU COVID Tracker.
"Who is monitoring the reporting of these labs?" Professor Cole said. "Obviously no one."
He thinks government officials need to take the daily positivity rates of COVID-19 testing with a grain of salt.
"A lot of people say we need to be on a downward trend for two weeks [to consider re-opening]," Cole said. "So this [data dump] breaks that trend, and sort of re-sets the clock. The state department of health should remove these tests immediately from the database."
CBS12 News reached out to a DOH spokesperson for comment, but did not hear back.
