Why 174,000 Utahns’ COVID Tests May Have Been Wrong: ‘They Deserve To Know The Truth’

As many as 174,000 Utah residents may have received inaccurate COVID test results from a lab used by TestUtah at the Timpanogos Regional Hospital in Orem, Utah, and were never notified of the incident.

According to a report by The Salt Lake Tribune, COVID test results from TestUtah were potentially inaccurate, but none of the people tested were notified of the error.

Documents and interviews obtained by the news outlet showed that the lab may have produced tests with false negatives or false positives at Timpanogos Regional Hospital. State health officials knew about the inaccuracies as early as May 2020 but did not suspend the COVID testing at the lab until Aug. 23, 2020, the news outlet said.

The Salt Lake Tribune revealed that federal regulators had questioned whether the lab was following the requirements for accurate COVID testing processing.

Dr. Robyn Atkinson-Dunn, former director of the Utah Public Health Laboratory, who was demoted after expressing concerns about TestUtah, told the news outlet, “the ethical thing is to let people know the potential they were given bad health information.”

Otherwise, “you’re messing with people’s health and livelihood,” she added.

In August 2020, the hospital had planned to send 100,993 patients a letter to notify them about the lab errors, but another 73,523 people would not be told about the issue because TestUtah sample collectors did not obtain patient information and the hospital did not know how to reach them. The letter was halted as it did not further “the public health imperative,” the news outlet reported.

While the hospital has suspended its COVID testing, Dr. Angela Dunn, executive director of the Salt Lake County Public Health Department and state epidemiologist during the first year of the pandemic, told The Salt Lake Tribune there is an ethical obligation to notify the people about the testing error.

“That goes to trust — 100,000-plus people were trusting this entity with their health information, and if what they got back was wrong, they deserve to know the truth.”

The testing errors could have resulted in the exposure of thousands of more people to the virus, in addition to the loss of work for those that thought they were infected with COVID-19 when they weren’t.

No sanctions were issued to Timpanogos Regional Hospital for the inaccurate COVID tests or to TestUtah for the errors. It is unclear when or if the 174,000 people who possibly received incorrect test results will be notified by the hospital.