Los Angeles law enforcement is severing ties with its COVID-19 testing firm due to its potential connections to Chinese actors.
Los Angeles County Sheriff Alex Villanueva announced Monday his office would no longer use Fulgent, a genetics firm in Los Angeles, for mandatory COVID-19 testing due to allegations that the company was connected to China. The sheriff expressed his concerns in a letter to the Board of Supervisors, stating he had attended a briefing at the FBI’s Los Angeles office, where he was informed of connections between Fulgent and China.
“I was shocked to learn Fulgent had strong connections with BGI, WuXi, and Huawei Technology,” wrote Villanueva. “All of which are linked with the Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences, the Peoples Republic of China State Council, and are under the control of the PRC.”
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Villanueva took issue with reports that China was gathering genetic data worldwide, and the FBI told Villanueva that the DNA data acquired by Fulgent is “not guaranteed to be safe and secure from foreign governments” and that the information is likely being shared with China, according to the letter.
The sheriff said he was “deeply concerned” by the vetting process that “failed to discover this, or discovered it, but chose to ignore it.”
Villanueva’s office will instead turn to other genetic firms for its testing and registration.
Los Angeles County Supervisor Sheila Kuehl, who could not attend the same briefing as Villanueva, disagreed with the sheriff’s assessment, saying she isn’t concerned about Fulgent’s intentions.
“From what I heard about the briefing, there was no evidence at all, zero, that Fulgent had breached anything or had any relationship with the Chinese government that was harmful to the information that might be present in the samples that they’re testing,” Kuehl told the Los Angeles Times.
The FBI declined to comment on what was talked about in its meeting with Villanueva.
Los Angeles County said in a statement sent to the Washington Examiner that its contract with Fulgent “prohibits any disclosure of data collected without the County’s express written permission, and requires the company to store and process County data/information only within the continental United States.” The county also noted that the company has been “certified by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, accredited by the College of American Pathologists, and licensed by the California Department of Public Health” and has contracts with several federal agencies, including the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Department of Homeland Security.
However, the county stated that “if a credible threat is confirmed, or if the federal government takes any steps to rescind its certification, we will take immediate action to ensure no employee data is misused.”
“False and defamatory statements have been made about Fulgent Genetics, its testing, use of data, corporate structure and sharing data with China,” Fulgent said in a statement sent to the Washington Examiner. “We will be requesting a correction / retraction immediately and intend to aggressively fight these lies on a number of fronts.”
Chinese companies such as Huawei have come under scrutiny due to their relationship with Chinese authorities and concerns that they may be a national security threat. While companies such as WuXi and BGI are partnered with Huawei, they claim they have been mislabeled as threats.
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Villanueva has made headlines for his stances against stringent COVID-19 protocols before, stating in October he would not enforce the county’s “politicized” vaccine mandate, saying, “There are entire groups of employees that are willing to be fired and laid off rather than get vaccinated.”
