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XCOVID Testing Labs Keep Up With Mandate
Keerthi Vedantam is a bioscience reporter at dot.LA. She cut her teeth covering everything from cloud computing to 5G in San Francisco and Seattle. Before she covered tech, Keerthi reported on tribal lands and congressional policy in Washington, D.C. Connect with her on Twitter, Clubhouse (@keerthivedantam) or Signal at 408-470-0776.

Los Angeles health care workers and school faculty (who are unable to get vaccinated) are now mandated by the state to get tested regularly. In the city and county, municipal employees from bus drivers to police officers are also required to be tested regularly if they do not get vaccinated.
Meanwhile, commercial labs, medical labs and public health labs are tasked with making sure the tests get processed and rapidly turned around. PCR tests, the most accurate kind of COVID-19 test that looks for viral RNA, are only useful if results are given within two days of taking the sample. Any longer than that, and California residents who unknowingly have the virus risk spreading it to more people.
"If it's longer than [two days] then the test results become less useful from a public health perspective," said Jeff Klausner, an infectious disease expert and member of the state's coronavirus testing task force. "The idea initially was to use contact tracing to find out who was positive as fast as possible to disrupt the chain of transmission. But given the huge number of cases that wasn't useful."
Of course, even two days of turnaround time isn't a foolproof way to stop the coronavirus from spreading. Someone could give a sample on one day, contract the virus later that day, and not know until a week later when they take another PCR test. But the state sees it as a more efficient method than contact tracing.
The two-day turnaround time has forced labs to stay open 24/7, with lab workers taking shifts under a rotating cast of managers. Some companies, like SummerBio, have automated the testing process to turn around thousands of results in the span of two days. It's a leap from the start of the pandemic, when companies struggling with inefficient supply were struggling to process tests any shorter than a week.
Labs processed nearly 1.6 million COVID-19 tests for Californians between Aug. 8 and Aug. 14, a big jump from the peak of the pandemic last winter, when labs were processing around half a million tests a day. That number will need to grow exponentially, as mandates send millions of California students and workers to testing sites as the delta variant surges. Klausner said the state has the capacity to process about 4 to 5 million tests a week.
"Right now we're in a way different place than we were [in] March 2020 when it made sense to declare a state of emergency to get prepared," Klausner, a member of the California coronavirus testing task force, said. "Now it doesn't make sense to continue the state of emergency. And we have a lot of laboratory capacity and there's a lot of underutilization."
That's not to say the state may run into problems down the line. Supply shortages, malfunctions in labs that are processing the bulk of tests could net false-positive COVID-19 results, or bring us back to the beginning of the pandemic, when test results took weeks to return and public officials scrambled to create the infrastructure to support mass testing amid supply shortages.
This could also further fuel the spread of the hyper-contagious delta variant.
The California Department of Public Health said it could not provide an estimate on how many workers in California were bound by a testing mandate.
"The number of people mandated to get tested on a regular basis is determined by those who eventually become vaccinated and those who remain unvaccinated. Therefore, it is a fluid number," a department representative said by email.
Here are the top ten labs in the state and how quickly they turned tests for the week of Aug. 8:
SummerBio
- TESTS PERFORMED: 267,405
- RESULTS WITHIN TWO DAYS: 99%
- RESULTS AFTER 2 DAYS: 1%
SummerBio, which has contracted with the Los Angeles School District, to test students and employees was responsible for approximately 8% of all COVID-19 testing in the first week of August. The company, based in Menlo Park, CA, was founded in 2020 and quickly raised $7.3 million to test for the coronavirus. While LAUSD is its biggest customer, the company has also partnered with UCLA, San Diego Unified School District, and a slew of large companies.
Fulgent Genetics
- TESTS PERFORMED: 146,836
- RESULTS WITHIN TWO DAYS: 99%
- RESULTS AFTER 2 DAYS: 1%
The ten-year-old diagnostics company Fulgent Genetics has long been involved in genetic testing to screen for hereditary conditions and cancers. It has leveraged its partnerships with hospitals, large companies and cities to test for COVID.
Valencia Branch Lab
- TESTS PERFORMED: 118,184
- RESULTS WITHIN TWO DAYS: 95%
- RESULTS AFTER 2 DAYS: 5%
Valencia Branch Lab is a public health laboratory north of Los Angeles that has partnered with Color, a startup creating testing kits for hereditary health problems that pivoted to COVID testing during the pandemic. In February, the California Department of Public Health announced multiple samples at the lab were either incorrectly processed or unable to be processed due to lab errors, but the company in charge of the lab said those errors have since been resolved.
Kaiser SoCal
- TESTS PERFORMED: 87,523
- RESULTS WITHIN TWO DAYS: 100%
- RESULTS AFTER 2 DAYS: 0%
Kaiser SoCal, which comprises 15 hospitals across Southern California, has taken on the lion's share of COVID-19 testing across all medical institutions in the state. The group has two labs that can process 280,000 tests a week.
Quest
- TESTS: 77,232
- RESULTS WITHIN TWO DAYS: 89%
- RESULTS AFTER 2 DAYS: 11%
Quest Diagnostics, another senior diagnostics company that has been doing bloodwork long before the pandemic, quickly added COVID-19 testing to its slew of deliverables. The company's partnership with grocery stores like Safeway and Vons have allowed it to expand their reach.
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Keerthi Vedantam is a bioscience reporter at dot.LA. She cut her teeth covering everything from cloud computing to 5G in San Francisco and Seattle. Before she covered tech, Keerthi reported on tribal lands and congressional policy in Washington, D.C. Connect with her on Twitter, Clubhouse (@keerthivedantam) or Signal at 408-470-0776.
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Real Estate Accounts for More Emissions Than Gas Cars. Here's How Fifth Wall Hopes to Change That.
David Shultz is a freelance writer who lives in Santa Barbara, California. His writing has appeared in The Atlantic, Outside and Nautilus, among other publications.
Fifth Wall, a Los Angeles-based venture capital group, has closed a half-billion-dollar fund to decarbonize the property industry. The new money brings the group’s total managed investments to just north of $3 billion. It will be used to “invest in anything and everything to decarbonize the real estate industry,” says Brendan Wallace, co-founder and managing partner at Fifth Wall.
The real estate industry is vast, and its contribution to climate change is well documented. A recent McKinsey study estimates “[r]eal estate drives approximately 39 percent of total global emissions.” Transportation, by comparison, is responsible for around 27%.
“It's the single biggest lever the world can turn on mitigating climate change,” says Wallace. “However, as a category, it's pretty systemically under-invested in from climate venture capital funds. “Only about 6%, historically, of climate venture capital has gone into real estate-related technologies.”
Fifth Wall wants to change that by bringing together some of the biggest real estate owners—names like Marriot, Hilton and British Land—and investing their money into technologies that will help decarbonize the industry.
Fifth Wall’s portfolio includes everything from companies that make more efficient HVAC motors to carbon negative cement. The group also has financial stakes in heat pump and green hydrogen companies. There’s software of all sorts to invest in: regulatory compliance, fintech and industrial internet of things (IoT) technology that can support a real estate and construction economy that tracks carbon.
Wallace says the sheer scope of the real estate market combined with new interest in climate conscious investments helped create a demand for new fintech products that can track emissions and provide financial products that bake carbon costs into savings. “The U.S. commercial and residential real estate market is bigger than the U.S. stock market. It's the single biggest capital market on Earth,” says Wallace. “The allocators to that market are overwhelmingly saying ‘We will preferentially deploy capital to low or no carbon footprint real estate.’ So THE cost of capital has dramatically changed for lower carbon footprint real estate.”
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David Shultz is a freelance writer who lives in Santa Barbara, California. His writing has appeared in The Atlantic, Outside and Nautilus, among other publications.
This Week in ‘Raises’: Whatnot Gets a $260M Boost, Fifth Wall Closes a $500M Fund
Decerry Donato is dot.LA's Editorial Fellow. Prior to that, she was an editorial intern at the company. Decerry received her bachelor's degree in literary journalism from the University of California, Irvine. She continues to write stories to inform the community about issues or events that take place in the L.A. area. On the weekends, she can be found hiking in the Angeles National forest or sifting through racks at your local thrift store.
The three-year-old livestream shopping platform secured over $200 million in fresh funding to expand beyond collectibles, while Marina del Rey-based Fifth Wall closed a half-billion-dollar fund aimed at companies bringing carbon neutral technology to real estate.
Venture Capital
Whatnot, a Marina del Rey-based live shopping platform, raised a $260 million Series D funding round co-led by DST Global and CapitalG.
Divergent, a Torrance-based motor vehicle manufacturing company leveraging 3D printing technology, received a $60 million venture loan led by Horizon Technology Finance Corp. Bridge Bank, and a $20 million line of credit from Western Alliance Bank.
Flip, an Inglewood-based social and live ecommerce platform that uses a TikTok-like discovery system, raised a $60 million Series B funding round led by WestCap.
San Diego-based synthetic biology startup Persephone Biosciences, raised a $15 million seed funding round co-led by First Bight Ventures and Propel Bio Partners.
Agoura Hills-based AI platform Cynthia.io, raised a $10 million seed funding round led by New York City based CMT Portfolio Advisors.
Ghost, a Los Angeles-based inventory distribution marketplace, raised a $13 million Series A funding round led by Union Square Ventures.
Fairplay, a Los Angeles-based software company that uses AI to reduce "algorithmic bias" in lending for people of color and women, raised a $10 million Series A funding round led by Nyca Partners.
San Diego-based crypto investments services company OnrampInvest, raised $7 million in a Series A funding round co-led by JAM FINTOP and EJF Capital LLC.
MELON, a Los Angeles-based metaverse startup that’s in charge of major music events on Roblox, raised a $5 million seed round from Crush Ventures, Gaingels, Comcast Spectacor, and former Roblox CFO Matt Finick.
Santa Monica-based Perelel, a women’s vitamin subscription-based company, raised a $4.7 million seed funding round led by Unilever Ventures.
Funds
Marina del Rey-based Fifth Wallraised $500 million for its first climate fund, focused on technologies aimed at decarbonizing the real estate industry.
Manhattan Beach-based B Capital Groupclosed a $250 million early-stage fund focused on digitizing large, traditional industries such as health care and finance.
Tech Coast Angels’ Los Angeles Fund (TCA LA), an Irvine-based venture capital and private equity firm, raised an undisclosed amount for its third fund aimed at a large range of startups based in the L.A. area.
Raises is dot.LA’s weekly feature highlighting venture capital funding news across Southern California’s tech and startup ecosystem. Please send fundraising news to Decerry Donato (decerrydonato@dot.la).
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Decerry Donato is dot.LA's Editorial Fellow. Prior to that, she was an editorial intern at the company. Decerry received her bachelor's degree in literary journalism from the University of California, Irvine. She continues to write stories to inform the community about issues or events that take place in the L.A. area. On the weekends, she can be found hiking in the Angeles National forest or sifting through racks at your local thrift store.
Here's What To Expect At LA Tech Week
Christian Hetrick is dot.LA's Entertainment Tech Reporter. He was formerly a business reporter for the Philadelphia Inquirer and reported on New Jersey politics for the Observer and the Press of Atlantic City.
LA Tech Week—a weeklong showcase of the region’s growing startup ecosystem—is coming this August.
The seven-day series of events, from Aug. 15 through Aug. 21, is a chance for the Los Angeles startup community to network, share insights and pitch themselves to investors. It comes a year after hundreds of people gathered for a similar event that allowed the L.A. tech community—often in the shadow of Silicon Valley—to flex its muscles.
From fireside chats with prominent founders to a panel on aerospace, here are some highlights from the roughly 30 events happening during LA Tech Week, including one hosted by dot.LA.
DoorDash’s Founding Story: Stanley Tang, a cofounder and chief product officer of delivery giant DoorDash, speaks with Pear VC's founding managing partner, Pejman Nozad. They'll discuss how to grow a tech company from seed stage all the way to an initial public offering. Aug. 19 at 10 a.m. to 12 p.m. in Santa Monica.
The Founders Guide to LA: A presentation from dot.LA cofounder and executive chairman Spencer Rascoff, who co-founded Zillow and served as the real estate marketplace firm’s CEO. Aug. 16 from 6 p.m. to 9 p.m. in Brentwood.
Time To Build: Los Angeles: Venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz (a16z) hosts a discussion on how L.A. can maintain its momentum as one of the fastest-growing tech hubs in the U.S. Featured speakers include a16z general partners Connie Chan and Andrew Chen, as well as Grant Lafontaine, the cofounder and CEO of shopping marketplace Whatnot. Aug. 19 from 2 p.m. to 8 p.m. in Santa Monica.
How to Build Successful Startups in Difficult Industries: Leaders from Southern California’s healthcare and aerospace startups gather for panels and networking opportunities. Hosted by TechStars, the event includes speakers from the U.S. Space Force, NASA Jet Propulsion Lab, Applied VR and University of California Irvine. Aug. 15 from 1 p.m. to 5 p.m. in Culver City.
LA Tech Week Demo Day: Early stage startups from the L.A. area pitch a panel of judges including a16z’s Andrew Chen and Nikita Bier, who co-founded the Facebook-acquired social media app tbh. Inside a room of 100 tech leaders in a Beverly Hills mansion, the pitch contest is run by demo day events platform Stonks and live-in accelerator Launch House. Aug. 17 from 12:30 p.m. to 3 p.m. in Beverly Hills.
Registration information and a full list of LA Tech Week events can be found here.
Christian Hetrick is dot.LA's Entertainment Tech Reporter. He was formerly a business reporter for the Philadelphia Inquirer and reported on New Jersey politics for the Observer and the Press of Atlantic City.