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I just got a COVID-19 test — who now knows I got it?


Anytime a person gets tested for COVID-19, it creates a data point public health officials can use to track the spread and prevalence of the virus—but it also creates a financial opportunity for a private company administering the test. There is a multibillion-dollar market for health data in the United States, and those same companies that are now scaling up coronavirus testing, like LabCorp and Quest Diagnostics, have been making money from patients’ medical data for years. When a patient gets tested at a private lab, that lab often removes the patient’s name, then feeds the test information to third…

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