No Virus Data Monday As Results Swamp State System
No new data on the COVID-19 outbreak in Shelby County will be issued Monday as the Tennessee Department of Health (TDH) works through a Sunday shutdown of its data system caused by “an extremely high volume of both COVID-19 and other laboratory test results being reported.”
TDH announced the “unplanned shutdown” of the state’s data surveillance program Sunday. The daily case counts and other virus data will return “once the system returns to full functionality and complete and accurate data can be provided.”
The state uses the CDC’s National Electronic Disease Surveillance System Base System (NBS) to report data on illnesses. It’s also the system health department staffers use for public health case investigations.
“Due to an extremely high volume of both COVID-19 and other laboratory test results being reported, there have been recent intermittent backlogs of labs in queue to be imported into the NBS system,” reads the Sunday statement from the TDH. “This issue is not unique to Tennessee, and is affecting all NBS jurisdictions.”
The program shut down at 2 a.m. Sunday, and officials started entering lab results back to it by 11 a.m. Sunday.
For this, the statement reads, “A limited number of COVID-19 test results were imported into NBS in the last 24 hours. TDH will not release updated COVID-19 numbers (Sunday) since our data are incomplete. This will also affect our metropolitan health department partners and their data updates (Monday).
Here is the latest data on the virus here from Saturday:
Test results reported Saturday morning showed 100 new cases of COVID-19 in Shelby County, down from a near-record 365 new cases reported Friday. Though, the new, lower number may be a result of the lag in test result reporting mentioned by TDH.
The county’s overall average positive rate for COVID-19 rose slightly to 7.7 percent on all test results. The total number of COVID-19 cases here stands at 9,310. The death toll is now 181 in Shelby County.
