Quest rolls employee virus tests ahead of returning to work

Yahoo Finance’s Alexis Christoforous, Brian Sozzi, and Anjalee Khemlani discuss the latest coronavirus news.

Video Transcript

ALEXIS CHRISTOFOROUS: Despite progress being made, we are still seeing cases of COVID-19 on the rise. Here are the numbers for you from Johns Hopkins. Worldwide, there are 5.6 million confirmed cases. That has resulted in nearly 351,000 deaths. A large portion of that is coming from the US where there are now more than 1.6 million confirmed cases of COVID-19, and the death toll is nearing 100,000.

Anjalee Khemlani is with us this morning, and, Anjalee, I've been reading about a new service that Quest Diagnostics is rolling out to help people return to the workforce after working from home for a few months. Tell us about that.

ANJALEE KHEMLANI: Absolutely, Alexis. So Quest is rolling out basically a package of services that it can offer, including antibody and swab testing, temperature checks, questionnaires, and that's sort of what they've been able to provide to large and small employers alike, and it's something that even LabCorp has done. So you see these large commercial labs really offering, you know, some sort of plan and some sort of, you know, service that companies can lean on while they're considering reopening.

There are debates about whether or not antibody testing is relevant or useful for such an occasion or whether or not, you know, using these types of tests as an all clear to get workers back in the offices is helpful versus just continuous testing and what kind of pressure that will place on supply chains. But for right now, it appears to be, you know, one of the only options.

Quest is a little bit more interesting in the sense that, you know, it does offer a wide variety. So for larger multinationals, it does have a network in other countries that it can lean on to help, you know, coordinate for any one large company. And then for smaller companies, sort of leaning on its consumer sites and other local spots to help businesses get workers back in the building, Alexis.

ALEXIS CHRISTOFOROUS: Can you tell us where testing stands right now? because I was also reading that some epidemiologists are actually confused by what the CDC has been doing. They've sort of been taking the tests that you would give someone to see if they've had COVID-19, they've been intermingling those tests with the results from the antibody tests. And they say that's very difficult to be able to trace accurately, and we know tracing is one of the big, important components to getting economies back up and running, getting people back into offices. So where do things stand there?

ANJALEE KHEMLANI: Absolutely. Yeah, that has been really confusing, especially when you consider, you know, the struggle that the CDC has faced and the country has faced in being able to offer enough testing. And so the question about whether or not that's being done to boost the US numbers in testing or whether or not-- or what the value of sort of combining the knowledge of how many cases are, in fact, out there, that is an ongoing debate, and a lot of experts are very concerned about, in general, undercounting as well, right? We've heard about those cases where people have had the virus or do have the antibodies but never got tested or people who have passed away without ever getting tested but autopsies show that they did, in fact, have the virus.

So a lot of confusion, as is expected during an outbreak. And they're still waiting to see, you know, what the analysis will show.

ALEXIS CHRISTOFOROUS: All right, Anjalee Khemlani, thanks for that.