Quest Diagnostics is furloughing employees, cutting pay, dismissing temporary workers, freezing hiring, cutting OT (Reuters)

Despite performing 40% of US COVID-19 tests, social distancing is destroying Quest& #39;s bread and butter: the other typical tests that Americans normally get

Quest Diagnostics and LabCorp are getting hit hard financially by Coronavirus crisis.

Elective or run-of-the-mill testing isn& #39;t being done. And even though they are doing a ton of COVID-19 testing, they are not collecting many samples, just testing them https://twitter.com/NTKOMidwife/status/1250050379926196231">https://twitter.com/NTKOMidwi...

When we talk about the lag in testing in America, we need to be specific. There are 3 steps:

1) Sample collection (like at drive-throughs) involving swabs/vials
2) Lab processing of those samples
3) Tests that determine whether samples contain Coronavirus

US lags in #1 and #2

We actually have millions of tests at the lab which can find whether samples contain Coronavirus

Thermo Fischer can produce 5 mil tests per week.

But US only has done ~2 mil tests at last check.

Because we lack swabs/vials and lab processing capacity https://www.npr.org/2020/04/13/832797592/a-month-after-emergency-declaration-trumps-promises-largely-unfulfilled">https://www.npr.org/2020/04/1...