[pkaye]

California unfortunately has a huge backlog of pending test results. The cause seems to be the private labs (Quest in particular) accepted test samples and build up a huge backlog of the earlier manually processed test samples. Other labs would push back if their queue got too long. The newer samples are run on the Roche high speed machines.

[grandmczeb]

Do you happen to have a source for the cause of the backlog? Not doubting you, just curious to read more information.

[pkaye]

See the link to the Atlantic mentioned by boyd.

[xivzgrev]

here you go: https://covidtracking.com/data/state/california

[grandmczeb]

I’m asking for a source on why the backlog happened. Unless I’m missing something, that just shows the number of pending cases.

[boyd]

They accepted more tests than they had the ability to quickly process. They also appear to have accepted many tests that required use of a lower throughput assay before switching to higher throughput testing on Roche 8800s: https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2020/03/next-covi...

[grandmczeb]

Thanks, googling found this[1] statement by Quest that they have a backlog of 115,000 tests, down from 160,000 on March 25th. It would be interesting to know what percentage of the California backlog is contained within that.

[1] https://newsroom.questdiagnostics.com/COVIDTestingUpdates