Oklahoma public health officials said Monday they have resolved issues that led to confusing COVID-19 daily case reports over the weekend.
Going forward, daily COVID case reports will be delayed a day to allow ensure there are no data or lab reporting issues.
The state health department reported 4,741 cases on Saturday, more than double the state’s previous high from earlier in the week. That number was then adjusted down to 4,507 on Sunday, and Saturday was officially listed as a non-reporting day.
State Epidemiologist Dr. Jared Taylor said changing Oklahoma’s electronic reporting system has been a big problem. It doesn’t always work right for labs, leaving them to fax results for the state to enter manually. Taylor said most of the "heavy lifting" technologically speaking falls on the labs.
"And so, we don’t want to go in and just tell these labs that they have to adopt this very arduous and difficult system, and, you know, we’re just going to leave it to them to get it figured out," Taylor said.
The state reported almost 2,200 new cases Monday, which reflects test results received on Sunday. Taylor said the seven-day average of new cases is the more important metric and still indicates significant and increasing community spread. It’s grown from 1,000 in early October to 2,049 today.
"I sent out to our leadership … quite a while ago that the new normal is a continuing increase in cases, and I think that’s where we’re going to be until we get a true change in behaviors and/or uptake a vaccine," Taylor said.
As of Monday evening, 1,102 Oklahomans were hospitalized for COVID-19 according to a daily, statewide hospital census, a new high. The state reported Monday 1,444 people have now died from the illness.
