At his coronavirus press conference on Wednesday, California’s Guin Newsom said the much-discussed backlog of daily cases would roll in over the next 72 hours, “probably” through Thursday night.
That backlog of 250,000-300,000 cases was created by a series of errors by state officials that caused the state’s daily new infections to be underreported over the course of two weeks.
Wednesday’s figures appear to reflect that the backlog was clear.
The governor announced on Wednesday that the state had received confirmation of 11,645 new cases. That included 6,212 overdue cases, Newsom said.
He said the delayed figures would be recorded back to the days when they were originally to be reported. ‘But for the sake of transparency … we give you numbers that represent the actual number of cases and a number that starts the process of picking up the total number of positives from this backlog. It is a long-winded way of saying that the actual number today is 5,433. ”
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Overall, Newsom’s message this week about the backlog could be characterized as: “Things are getting fixed.”
But just 24 hours after that news conference, the California COVID-19 dashboard on Thursday announced that the state had 7,085 new cases. That is much less than the 11,645 reported on Wednesday. In fact, it looked much more like the 75,751 new cases reported Monday, before the backlog numbers began to show.
On Wednesday, the state COVID-19 dashboard was emblazoned with a disclaimer: “Today’s cases include overdue cases that would have been reported in previous days and weeks and are not an accurate representation of cases reported in the previous 24 hours.”
On Thursday, the disclaimer was changed to: “Numbers may not represent real day-to-day change, as reporting of test results may be delayed.”
Is the drop a result of a decrease in the number of overdue cases being reported, the actual number of new cases being reported, or both? There was no official guidance on that.
But it seems unbelievable that the positive test results contained in the 250,000-300,000 report would only amount to 6,000 finite infections. This is especially true given the fact that the state’s 14-day test positivity rate is around 6 percent. With a count of 250,000 test results, that positivity rate would yield 15,000 positives.
In addition to the 7,000 new infections, the state saw 160 new deaths related to COVID-19, down from 180 the day before, but still well above the 14-day average of 136 lives lost daily. The total life loss in the province of LA attributed to coronavirus was 10808.
State statistics for deaths, hospitalizations and occupancy of ICU are said to be unaffected by the backlog.
Speaking of which, hospitalizations and coronavirus-related ICU visits continue to trend downward, declining by 3.8 percent and 1.6 percent, respectively.
You can watch Newsom’s Wednesday news conference below.
