Pop-up testing clinics run by the Center for Covid Control will be closed indefinitely, Illinois Attorney General Kwame Raoul announced. (WTTW News)
COVID-19 testing sites run by a Rolling Meadows-based firm under investigation by federal and state officials will be shuttered for the “foreseeable future,” Illinois Attorney General Kwame Raoul announced late Thursday.
Attorneys from the attorney general’s consumer fraud division are probing allegations that those who sought a COVID-19 test at pop-up sites run by the Center for Covid Control did not get their results as promised, with some people reporting they never found out whether they had the deadly virus or only after a long wait. Others told investigators for the attorney general that they got results from a test they never took.
Other complaints alleged that tests were being stored improperly, and staff members were not wearing proper personal protective equipment like face masks, according to the attorney general.
Amid an outcry, all locations operated by the Center for Covid Control shut down Jan. 14. The sites were scheduled to reopen, but Raoul said the firm’s owners “have agreed the Center for COVID Control will postpone the reopening of any pop-up testing locations in Illinois for the foreseeable future.”
Raoul thanked “the former employee whistleblowers who came forward to report practices that compromised tests.”
The Better Business Bureau gave the Center for Covid Control an “F” rating, its lowest. The company operated 300 pop-up testing sites across the country.
The Minnesota Attorney General’s Office sued the Center for Covid Control on Wednesday, alleging the firm gave people incorrect or falsified test results or didn’t deliver results at all.
The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, the federal agency overseeing the lab that processed tests administered for the Center for Covid Control found “non-compliance” and “deficiencies,” in its operations, as first reported by Block Club Chicago.
A list of testing sites approved by the Illinois Department of Health is available online, and sites run by the Chicago Department of Public Health are listed here.
Contact Heather Cherone: @HeatherCherone | (773) 569-1863 | [email protected]
