Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison filed a lawsuit Wednesday against a company and its associated clinical laboratory, which was allegedly providing Covid-19 testing but failed to deliver test results or delivered untimely, falsified test results.
The lawsuit, filed Wednesday in Hennepin County district court, alleges that the Minnesota Department of Health received complaints after people were tested for Covid-19 at pop-up testing sites around Minnesota operated by Center for Covid Control reported never receiving their rapid antigen test or PCR test results from the company’s associated lab, Doctors Clinical Laboratory, or received results much later than the time the companies promised.
In other instances, the lawsuit alleges, some people reported receiving results that were “riddled with inaccurate and false information including listing the wrong test type and false dates and times for when samples were collected from consumers” while other people received negative Covid-19 test results when they hadn’t even submitted samples to be tested.
The suit claims the companies violated Minnesota’s consumer protection laws, including instructing their employees to tell people who called about late test results that the results were coming in 24 hours, “even if the employees had no idea where the sample was or if the lab,” and to “falsely tell consumers that the test result had been inconclusive and that they needed to take another test,” if they called multiple times.
CNN did not immediately receive a response from the two Illinois-based companies, Center for Covid Control or Doctors Clinical Laboratory, when reached for comment.
“My job is to fight for Minnesotans’ security and help them live with dignity, safety, and respect. Making sure that Minnesotans have accurate tools to [keep] them safe from the COVID-19 pandemic is a key part of that job,” Ellison said in a statement announcing the lawsuit.
Last week, CCC announced it would be pausing operations from Jan. 14 until Jan. 22, because “unusually high patient demand has stressed staffing resources, as has been widely reported, in a subset of our locations, affecting our usual customer service standards and diagnostic goals.”
“Center for Covid Control is committed to serving our patients in the safest, most accurate and most compliant manner. Regrettably, due to our rapid growth and the unprecedented recent demand for testing, we haven’t been able to meet all our commitments,” CCC founder and CEO Aleya Siyaj said in the announcement.
More News
Decades in the Making, a New Era Dawns for the N.C.A.A.: Paying Athletes Directly
Opinion | America Is Still Having a ‘Vibecession’
Cannabis Tops Alcohol as Americans’ Daily Drug of Choice