State Health Leaders: Reporting Snag To Show Misleading COVID-19 Numbers Wednesday

State health leaders said low daily COVID-19 cases have been common in recent weeks. That’s why they want everyone to know the numbers released Wednesday will be misleading after a reporting snafu.

The state has been switching over to a new reporting system over the last few months.

The Oklahoma State Department of Health said the transition requires labs to report through a new platform. OSDH said as part of this process, they double checked their data and discovered an anomaly with one lab. The lab ran into an issue in uploading their reports, so no data was recorded.

The result is 1,300 additional cases will be reported Wednesday, making numbers look artificially high when they're not.

"Many of the reporting results that come in on a given day don't reflect what's taken place that day or even the day before. So, the majority of the cases we're finding actually took place before that period of submissions," State Epidemiologist Dr. Jared Taylor said.

Most the of the cases in being reported Wednesday actually happened between December and late February.