By Natallie Rocha | San Diego Union-Tribune
Cue Health, the once high-flying San Diego biotech supplying rapid COVID-19 test kits to the NBA and Google, is laying off all employees and shutting down on Friday.
Cue’s closure comes a week after the U.S. Food and Drug Administration warned consumers to throw away its COVID-19 test kits because they could give false results. The San Diego firm said on Thursday it stopped selling the COVID-19 tests, its only fully FDA-approved commercial product.
The company notified employees on Monday that its entire workforce will be laid off effective Friday, according to Cue’s Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification Act (WARN) paperwork filed with the state of California.
Earlier this month, Cue laid off half of its workforce, or 230 employees, to cut costs and refocus its pipeline of products.
The latest WARN notice informed the state that Cue is accelerating the end date for these employees from July to Friday. Employees will receive their final paycheck this week, which includes compensation and benefits they would have received through July.
After the last round of layoffs, Cue, which has eight locations across the county in Sorrento Valley and Vista, had about 250 employees left. Now, those remaining 250 workers are also getting laid off this week.
“Due to the fluid nature of this situation and based on the information available at this time, the Board of Directors of Cue Health has determined that the affected employees’ employment will conclude effective May 24, 2024,” Cue Health’s chief human resource officer, Allison Blackwell wrote in the notice. “Similarly, the Company is concurrently informing all remaining US employees that their jobs are affected, and, as such, every remaining U.S. employee who has not yet received a WARN Notice, including Company leadership, is receiving a WARN notification today.”
Cue Health has been skirting the edge of a financial cliff since the demand and government funding…
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