BEAUMONT, Texas — Texas is reporting more than half a million COVID-19 cases that have been affected by a massive backlog. The Texas Department of State Health Services' (DSHS) online COVID-19 dashboard has shown sudden changes in testing, case numbers and the state's positivity rate amid the pandemic.
The state says three private labs are responsible for the bulk of the backlog of cases. The DSHS says Walgreens dumped around 59,000 test results this past weekend.
Christus Meditech, a major hospital group, submitted around 95,000 tests in a file format the state system couldn't read properly.
And almost two weeks ago, the state began working through roughly 354,000 tests from Quest Diagnostics labs that were being automatically canceled out because of a software glitch.
“We see that there are adjustment that need to be made," said Chris Van Deusen, DSHS spokesperson. "And we are doing that as quickly as possible, and we are doing it as transparently as possible. So, we can't guarantee there is not going to be an issue in the future, but when we find it, we will identify it and work with that lab, and get it corrected.”
Large metros like the Dallas area had to add an extra 6,000 cases to their county counts.
In June, Southeast Texas saw a data dump that the state blamed on discrepancies in the reporting of cases at the prisons.
We haven't seen a data dump since. But, our region is being impacted another way.
“Sometimes we will get those results back in as little as 48 hours. We are even happy with 72 hours, but for the most part, we are looking at five to seven days,” Sherry Ulmer of the Beaumont Public Health Department said.
That's the average time Southeast Texans are waiting for their results.
“We need testing that we can get the results back in a timely manner, so we can do contact tracing. It is not effective if we are getting those results back after seven days,” Ulmer said.
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