On Oct. 20, 2021, Quest Diagnostics announced it had formed an agreement with the Texas Department of State Health Services to provide COVID-19 Kindergarten through Senior school testing services to support safer classroom learning throughout the state of Texas.

Ginkgo Bioworks provided support services, such as online reporting and site staffing, for the program through its K-12 school testing collaboration with Quest.

With thousands of schools eligible for the program throughout over 1,150 districts in Texas, Quest Diagnostics will offer COVID-19 testing services to participating public, private and charter K-12 schools for the duration of the 2021-2022 school year.

Quest will perform testing using polymerase chain reaction (PCR) and other nucleic acid amplification test (NAAT) technologies through its major clinical laboratories in the Houston and Dallas-Fort Worth metropolitan areas.