Nebraska-based GS Labs had trouble keeping up with demand for testing and at some points had big backlogs. APM Reports found public health officials in Minnesota and other states have been grappling with problems caused by GS Labs for more than a year. 

Among the concerns: In April 2021, the company was delayed reporting 2,300 tests by up to a month, including 205 positive results, to Minnesota officials. The issues caused repeated headaches for contract tracers tasked with limiting the spread of the virus. 

In August, GS Labs notified Minnesota and other states that it accepted so many tests that backlogged samples had to be stored in freezers for more than a month before they were processed.  

In December, company officials told Minnesota that a lab employee at a GS Labs site in the St. Paul suburb of Maplewood caused 87 false positives.  

Even after food stores pass excess fresh food they cannot sell to food shelves, some of that produce may still go to waste. If food shelf clients don’t pick it up, it might go to the landfill. 

In Mankato, the South Central Minnesota Food Recovery Project has come up with another way to use that food, while also helping the planet.

There’s still time to catch Art to Change the World’s “Age of Age” exhibit, which asks artists a generation apart to create work together. A concert performance of Janet Preus’s original musical “Water from Snow” draws big Minneapolis names to Puposky, Minn. In Duluth, Ojibwe storytime invites kids of all ages twice a week through August.