Dallas County adds 5,000+ COVID-19 tests from backlog in one day, reports coding errors

Laura Dyrda (Twitter) -

On Aug. 15, Dallas County added data from more than 5,000 new coronavirus cases due to a backlog with the state's reporting system, according to a report from The Dallas Morning News.

Five things to know:

1. The county reported 5,195 of the 5,361 new COVID-19 cases Aug. 15 were part of the backlog and 4,298 of the positive tests were conducted in July; another 13 were from tests conducted in March. Only 603 of the backlogged tests were taken in August.

2. Dallas County Judge Clay Jenkins said there will likely be additional spikes in COVID-19 test reporting as more batches of missing tests are added into the system over the next several days.

3. Errors in the state's COVID-19 reporting system failed to report the tests to the county when they were originally taken, and contact tracing hasn't been done for those individuals.

4. The Texas health department is upgrading the reporting system and beginning to resolve the backlog of tests. The data collection system originally only tracked positive test results and received significantly more data during the pandemic.

5. The health department issued a statement saying several commercial labs are submitting test backlogs in the coming week. The report also noted that at least one hospital lab coded data improperly.

More articles on data analytics:
Texas launches investigation into COVID-19 positivity rate volatility
UT Austin's COVID-19 death rate projections skewed by erroneous data point
California still struggling with COVID-19 data-reporting inaccuracies

 

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