California's amended budget bill allocates $217 million to the state's troubled PerkinElmer COVID testing lab, as the lab continues to fail to fulfill the mandates in its recently renewed $1.7 billion no-bid state contract.
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.
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.