Nikki Fried blames Quest test dump on ‘lack of leadership’ from Gov. office

Nikki Fried
'This is something we should have been on top of at the Department of Health.'

Nikki Fried, Florida’s Commissioner of Agriculture and Consumer Services, blamed the Governor for a “lack of leadership and oversight” that led to a dump of COVID-19 tests this week.

Quest Diagnostics dropped a batch of 75,000 tests on Monday, some of them dating back to April, tests reflecting infection rates at the peak of the pandemic.

A vexed Gov. Ron DeSantis released them from their obligation, saying the data was “useless and stale” and that the company had “abdicated its responsibility.”

But for Fried, the issues revealed go beyond Quest, extending to DeSantis’ management of the COVID-19 epidemic, where she contended there has been a larger abdication from DeSantis and Surgeon General Scott Rivkees.

“We have been having issues since day one on testing and testing results,” Fried said on C-Span’s Washington Journal Thursday.

“People here have been waiting for weeks in the state of Florida to get those results. It defeats the purpose of testing if somebody’s waiting weeks to get the results, and in the meantime they’re going around and talking to friends and family and visiting establishments and spreading the virus.”

“This has always been a concern,” Fried said. “That we didn’t have the amount of labs that are necessary, and obviously with Quest, there was significant backlog they dumped.”

“It’s just showing that this is something we should have been on top of at the Department of Health. This is a contract that they initiated, and because of a lack of leadership and oversight, they didn’t understand what was going on in the state.

The Commissioner has been out of the loop in terms of the Governor’s management of the virus, which has irked her.

She has gone so far as to launch a dueling public awareness campaign.

“People want to know their leaders are working together,” Fried said,  “that their leaders are putting them first.”

“That’s just not happening in this state,” Fried lamented.

A.G. Gancarski

A.G. Gancarski has been the Northeast Florida correspondent for Florida Politics since 2014. He writes for the New York Post and National Review also, with previous work in the American Conservative and Washington Times and a 15+ year run as a columnist in Folio Weekly. He can be reached at [email protected] or on Twitter: @AGGancarski


5 comments

  • Charlotte Greenbarg

    September 3, 2020 at 10:16 am

    Smirking Fried, whose married “fiance’ beats her, who tried to use her office to take over the cannabis regulation maybe because her boyfriend is in the business. This Fried? So sick of her rants. Clean your own house.

    • Sam

      September 3, 2020 at 12:15 pm

      State business vs. personal??? you are a sicko and you should take a remedial course in basic decency.

    • James R. Miles

      September 4, 2020 at 9:25 am

      Oh Charlotte, clean your own house and grow a brain, if that is possible!

      • John McMahon

        September 4, 2020 at 1:46 pm

        Wow james!! You get easily TRIGGERED by women very easily! So your telling a woman who has an opinion different than your… white supremacist male privilege propaganda ideals , to “grow a brain”? That’s a form of ABUSE!
        How long have you held back the hate for women and girls who only ask for an equal voice ? Are you as a so called liberal democrat party member trying to INTIMIDATE her into just being seen and not heard? Sick violent Men like you are disgusting.

  • Ocean Joe

    September 3, 2020 at 11:35 am

    Smirking or not, Fried is right about our governor’s “wait till Trump tells me what to do” approach and you know it.

Comments are closed.


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