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State Inspections Confirm Whistleblower Allegations At Troubled California COVID Lab

/ CBS Sacramento

SACRAMENTO (CBS13) - The California Department of Public Health (CDPH) released its long-overdue of California's troubled COVID testing lab, following a . Inspectors confirmed the whistleblowers' allegations and found the lab ."

Along with  CDPH that downplayed the findings and misconstrued some whistleblower allegations. However, the tell a very different story.

Lab inspectors issued scathing reports following the  and the Both inspections found the lab to Californians.

Instead of pausing testing or warning the public, the state allowed the lab to continue processing patient samples and concealed the risks as problems continued for at least six months and the lab

Inspection records confirm whistleblower allegations that:

  • Lab practices
  • When the lab discovered it , it
  • There were
  • Roughly half the lab's
  • by miscategorizing errors as problems with the sample
  • The lab by repeatedly making unauthorized changes to the test
  • The lab used its version of the test for months before that the results were accurate

Records also reveal:

  • Inspectors found that , was not qualified to run the lab " Rosendorff is the former lab director of Elizabeth Holmes'
  • The lab did not Their mandates a 48hr testing turnaround time.
  • been corrected CDPH and the Newsom Administration ."
  • , ten days before its $1.7B state contract was renewed.

*Note this is a partial list of  that may be updated as we continue to review inspection records.

During the , prompted by the whistleblower complaints, inspectors confirmed the allegations and found problems so egregious that they were forced to notify federal regulators,

"Because of the seriousness of these deficiencies, your laboratory no longer meets the requirements to perform testing under the Health and Safety Code. Based on the finding of immediate jeopardy, this office has contacted the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS), and has notified them of our determination of non-compliance.

Two weeks later, CDPH and PerkinElmer claimed the "serious deficiencies" had  We now know that simply wasn't true.

Not surprisingly, the agency did not issue sanctions against its own lab Monday. Instead, in its summary of the investigation, , "(t)his blueprint can serve as a model for other states, and the federal government, in how to scale testing."

If it weren't for brave whistleblowers risking their careers in the name of public health, the public may never have learned of these shocking public health failures at California's COVID testing lab.

UPDATE -  Please See Updated Report here:

THE COVID LAB: State Secrets Exposed

by Julie Watts TV Investigates on

FOLLOW OUR CONTINUING COVERAGE:

STATE SECRETS: The Whistleblower Investigation 

STATE SECRETS: The Troubled Test

 STATE SECRETS: Continued Accountability
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