BEAUMONT, Texas — On Wednesday, Texas experienced its largest single-day increase in new coronavirus cases with more than 2,500 reported.
About 21% of those came from Jefferson County alone, as the state begins to include prison populations.
These 523 cases didn't just collect overnight.
According to Sherry Ulmer with the Beaumont Public Health Department, the Texas Department of Criminal Justice serves as its own health department, generating its own infectious disease reports.
Since they are only required to report information to the state, local health departments are left in the dark when it comes to coronavirus data.
But the data doesn't tell the full story. The good news is most of the 500 plus cases we saw come in Wednesday are no longer active COVID-19 cases.
Jeremy Desel is with the Texas Department of Criminal Justice.
"The majority of the numbers that you see at the Stiles and LeBlanc units in the Beaumont area are tests that were conducted well over three weeks ago,” Desel said.
The bad news is there's no way to properly track down when those positive tests were taken.
So why are these old cases surfacing now? It simply is reflecting reports that have occurred previously that are correctly being reported in that area.
The state says the spike can be attributed to changes in how local health departments are reporting numbers.
Instead of reporting those numbers independently, they'll now be included in the county total. As for what happened Wednesday, it was a number dump of sorts.
The Beaumont Public Health Department finds the new way of reporting problematic.
TDCJ is only required to send reports to the state. They aren't required to send the reports to local health departments. Ulmer believes a big piece of the data puzzle is still missing.
"We have absolutely no information,” Ulmer said. “We have no lab results. We don't know if these inmates are male, female. We have no demographics on them at all. So, we don’t know who is recovered, who is active. They are just included in our numbers. So, it is like we are mixing apples and oranges here.”
