With the backlog of nearly 300,000 lab reports finally cleared, state officials confirmed Friday that coronavirus cases have officially declined over the past two weeks – a trend that was brief in demand for the records snafu.
The state is ready to sort through the delayed results of the coronavirus test of the past two weeks, Govin Gavin Newsom said Friday, with an encouraging conclusion: Statewide, the positive rate has dropped to about 6.2%, about a full percentage point dropped since before the backlog was reported.
Of the 7,934 new statewide cases reported Thursday, the majority were as high as about 4,429 from previous weeks, following a similar trend on Wednesday. Next week, the state will provide a county-level distribution of overdue data, but Newsom generally characterized the fresh positivity and business rates as moving in “a positive direction.”
“This will be the last day we will have to report backlogged cases,” Newsom said. “This completes one hundred percent of our efforts to address the backlog and update our case numbers.”
Local officials were embroiled in the disturbance, beginning about two weeks ago, when Secretary of Health and Human Services Drs. Marky Ghaly reports that a series of errors had led the state to start cases of coronavirus starting in late July. Counties were forced to rely on spreadsheets for data while the state worked to understand the extent of the problem and repair it.
‘We’re back to feeling blind. We do not know how the epidemic is trending, “Santa Clara County Health Officer Dr. Sara Cody said at the time.” This lack of data does not let us know where this epidemic is heading, how fast it is growing – or not. . “
By August 7, the state had announced a fix, but Newsom ordered an investigation into the series of events that led to the backlog. A total of 296,000 records were eventually affected.
Despite fears from local officials, epidemiologists throughout the drama have maintained that cases of coronavirus are likely to decrease – even if they may not be sure of how many. Hospitalization rates have dropped dramatically since a peak of more than 7,000 patients on July 21, indicating that the wave of early June infections was likely to intensify.
That was enough to trigger a moment of rare optimism on Wednesday, when he declared that the state was “turning a corner” on the pandemic.
“These are specific pieces of evidence that align with some optimism that what we as a state do … that what you do works,” Newsom said. “We want to continue to see these numbers go down.”
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