April 1, 2020 / By Drew Griffin, Curt Devine, Scott Bronstein and Nelli Black
(CNN) – As the US health care system has scrambled to track the spread of coronavirus, one of the nation’s largest commercial labs has faced a backlog of tests that ballooned in the last two weeks, and has delayed results in some cases up to 10 days.
New Jersey-based Quest Diagnostics had about 160,000 coronavirus test orders waiting to be processed on March 25, which amounted to about half of the 320,000 total orders for the tests the company had received up to that date, according to Quest internal materials obtained by CNN. 
The company, which is now testing for the virus at a dozen labs across the country, referred to the orders as a “significant amount of backlog,” according to the materials.
Although a vast network of labs at public health departments and universities are also testing for the novel coronavirus, the Trump administration has leaned on commercial labs, which have greater capacity, to roll out widespread testing.