By NICK GOSNELL
Hutch Post
HUTCHINSON, Kan. — A large group of tests came back all at once from a Kansas lab over the weekend.
"Quest Labs out of Lenexa, we had 295 tests that took five days or more to get a response and 178 of those took 10 days or more," said Reno County Health Department Director Nick Baldetti. "After communicating with Quest Labs, it looks to be like they just got inundated with drive-through testing throughout the state and it just looks like they're trying to catch back up."
None of the tests that came back were positive, that turnaround time is not normal, though.
"What we've grown accustomed to is a day to a day and a half turnaround time," Baldetti said. "At max, two."
One to two days has been standard since the beginning of April.
"You can understand the frustration of someone who got tested and they all came back negative," Baldetti said. "They've been asked to self-quarantine for 5 to 10 days. It can be problematic for the individual, epidemiologically, assuming that the individual is quarantining themselves, I don't know that there's much of a challenge."
Baldetti plans to update the media when he has an idea where the batch of tests originally came from.