Only On 2: Former Employees Take Issue With Conditions, Operations At NorthShore Clinical Labs COVID Testing Sites
CHICAGO (CBS) -- We are getting our first look inside the COVID testing lab at the center of two public health investigations.
NorthShore Clinical Labs was paid $165 million by the Health Resources and Services Administration to run COVID tests for thousands in Illinois and around the country. Now, former employees are speaking out about how they say the lab operated.
CBS 2's Chris Tye reported the new details Tuesday in a story you'll see only on 2.
NorthShore Clinical Labs said it was a perfect storm that created huge testing problems around Christmas. But employees said some lab workers got high while on the job and took photos of COVID tests being thrown away. But the company said there was good reason for it.
Thousands of samples a day were taken from Chicago area COVID pop-up testing sites around the holidays. NorthShore Clinical Labs is a massive operation that, to date, has been paid over $165 million from the HRSA for testing.
As Omicron peaked, the number of incoming samples soared, and NorthShore and its staff were overwhelmed. Workers on the lab floor, told not to talk to the media, are now sharing with CBS 2 images they say need to be made public. The images show walls of samples awaiting testing and huge bags of samples thrown away before ever being tested.
In a statement to CBS 2, NorthShore said the surge in cases and trouble with shipping companies and delivery times lead to samples getting to the lab more than 72 hours after being taken or stored improperly along the way. That left the samples untestable, according to CDC guidelines.
The company tells CBS 2: "…Numerous specimen shipments were delayed for several days or weeks before being delivered"; "…they wouldn't have produced valid test results."; and, "It would have been a huge waste of time and resources for Northshore to process these compromised specimens, so Northshore put them aside and marked them for disposal."
NorthShore workers also told CBS 2 that the smell of marijuana was a frequent issue on the lab floor. They shared an email from lab bosses:
"It has come to our attention that individuals in the laboratory have been using marijuana in the workplace and during working hours, resulting in the smell of marijuana throughout the laboratory."
The company confirmed the issue, the email and the termination of multiple employees, saying, "…it's a standard communication about NorthShore's longstanding policy of zero tolerance for employee drug use at work."
NorthShore remains the focus of state health department investigations in both Illinois and Nevada. While they have stopped working with any third party pop-up testing sites, Northshore continues to operate in multiple states. It said the labs return quick PCR results now that the Omicron wave has subsided. Continued requests for an interview have been denied.
