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California's troubled COVID testing lab will soon be shutting down. CBS13 has learned the state is terminating its $1.7 billion-dollar no-bid contract with PerkinElmer, the private company running California's taxpayer-funded COVID lab.

Lab experts are speaking out after CDPH allowed its billion-dollar COVID lab to continue operating for nearly a year while failing to correct deficiencies that posed "immediate jeopardy to patient health and safety" likely to cause "serious injury or harm, or death."

Following a CBS13 investigation into the state's COVID testing lab and its $1.7 billion contract with PerkinElmer, the company is now effectively suing one whistleblower and indicating it may sue others.

State Senate Republican Leader, Scott Wilk, is demanding answers from the Department of Public Health following an ongoing CBS13 investigation into shocking public health failures at the state's $1.7 billion COVID testing lab. The state said it would make it's investigation public by mid-March but now says "the investigation is ongoing" as problems continue and the lab contract is set to renew at the end of the month.

After months of denied requests for information and interviews from public health officials, CBS13 turned to the Governor for answers. His response indicated he may not be aware of what's been going on inside the state's $1.7 billion COVID testing lab.

Parents are demanding answers now a month after the state was supposed to release its investigation into its troubled COVID testing lab.

At least one school district has paused COVID testing after students got false-positive results from the state's troubled COVID-19 testing lab. Another says their positivity rate increased 1000% after switching to the state lab which has a 60% higher positivity rate than CA overall. Administrators are now calling for a state-wide moratorium on asymptomatic PCR testing for student athletes.

Lab techs sleeping while processing COVID samples for testing. COVID test swabs found in the restrooms. These are just two of the concerning allegations from whistleblowers about what's happening inside the state's new billion-dollar COVID testing lab.