The past two years have caused staffing issues in many areas of healthcare, but medical labs had already been struggling to hire enough people before the COVID-19 pandemic's onset.

The CDC is making a push to bolster medical labs around the country, the agency said Sept. 17. 

Congress is considering two bills that would regulate lab tests designed in-house, and the senior author of a new study focused on the tests, published in the Journal of Molecular Diagnostics, said he thinks it's warranted.

Demand in the lab real estate market is driven partially by pharmaceutical sales, which are predicted to grow at a compound annual rate of 7.4 percent through 2026, according to a Sept. 15 report by Chicago-based commercial real estate firm JLL.

Shanghai-based biopharmaceutical company Zai Lab is ramping up its U.S. operations with a Cambridge, Mass., office, the company said Sept. 16.

New York City-based Weill Cornell Medicine will build new research labs and upgrade its clinical and virology labs with funds from a $1.5 billion fundraising campaign, the school said Sept. 14. Weill Cornell has raised more than half that so far.

Phoenix-based genetic sequencing company Tesis Labs is partnering with Atlanta-based Premier Health to offer genetic testing to patients in the state, Tesis said Sept. 15.

The global clinical lab test market will reach $320.14 billion by 2028, according to a study by New York City-based market research firm Polaris. The figure represents a 7.3 percent compound annual growth rate.

Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer proposed a $1.4 billion healthcare package Sept. 14, including $220 million to build a new public health lab in Lansing and $115 million to update health IT systems.

West Bloomfield, Mich.-based Orchard Laboratories has seen a 25 percent increase in demand for COVID-19 testing in the past month, with the delta variant's spread pushing positivity rates higher, the testing lab said Sept. 15.

Seven volunteer Montana National Guard soldiers will begin assisting the state's lab Sept. 15 with its COVID-19 response, the governor's office said. 

The average annual salary for clinical lab technicians in the U.S. is $55,990, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics' occupational employment statistics survey released March 31.

Engineers at the University of Texas at Austin have created a "lab-on-a-chip" device that can detect small amounts of virus in a sample. With the device, one silicon chip can test several patients with the accuracy of a clinical test, without the need for a trip to the hospital.

Burlington, N.C.-based Labcorp is offering Medicare Advantage-qualifying members of Philadelphia-based Independence Blue Cross home collection kits to manage diabetes and screen for colon cancer and kidney disease in those with diabetes, the company said Sept. 9. 

Data management firm 4medica will provide services for Wisconsin's Marshfield Clinic Health system's labs, Marina Del Rey, Calif.-based 4medica said Sept. 8.

New Jersey reported an abnormally low 268 new confirmed positive COVID-19 tests Sept. 7. State Department of Health spokesperson Nancy Kearney said the number was lower than in recent weeks due to a lab processing error.

Alpharetta, Ga.-based Provista Diagnostics, a clinical diagnostics lab owned by medical diagnostics company Todos Medical, cleared all necessary hurdles to begin producing its new respiratory test panel, the lab said in a Sept. 1 news release.

Oakland, Calif.-based Kaiser Permanente said that technical issues with lab system processing have led to thousands of delayed COVID-19 test results since the end of July, GovTech reported Sept. 2. 

Louisville, Ky.-based Norton Healthcare opened a cancer genomics lab, the company said in a Sept. 2 news release. It is the first lab in the city with on-site genomic testing.

COVID-19 testing labs around the country are again seeing delays in test result reporting, according to reports from California and Ohio.