ABERDEEN, Md. — Hundreds of people have to get re-tested for COVID-19 after their tests taken Monday had to be discarded.
[Given that a full week has passed since the initial bungled test, and the quarantine period of those testing positive is five days, it’s unclear why most people would make the effort to submit to a re-test. – HH]
The Harford County Health Department confirmed that 471 tests — all taken on Monday, Jan. 10 — couldn’t be processed. The vendor for that site, Omnipoynt Solutions, sent an email to everyone impacted to let them know.
According to the letter, there was a COVID-19 outbreak at the lab Omnipoynt usually uses and the test samples had to be sent to another lab.
By the time that lab was able to start processing the tests, the saliva samples expired and did not arrive in time to be processed.
Ronya Nassar with the Harford County Health Department said:
“They notified us later last week because we were getting calls and questions from people who said they didn’t receive their results, so I guess by the time the tests got rerouted around mid-week, that’s when we found out the situation … ” read more.
