Abbott: Virus data now ‘far more accurate’
State officials nearly finished working through a backlog of more than 850K COVID-19 tests
AUSTIN — Gov. Greg Abbott on Sunday said the state’s current coronavirus statistics are “far more accurate” than they were over the past several months, as the state has nearly finished documenting more than 850,000 backlogged tests that have skewed a key indicator of the severity of the outbreak in Texas.
The state has dealt with two separate testing backlog issues throughout the month of August, attributing one to an outdated reporting system and a second to coding errors with data from three private labs.
Problems with the backlog date back to the beginning of the pandemic. State health officials disclosed the extent of them to the public last week, as counties statewide questioned an influx of old results indicating a surge in positive tests, even as lab-confirmed COVID-19 hospitalizations have declined.
“The data that we have now is far more accurate than what we had last month and maybe even a couple of weeks ago,” Abbott said. “That data should be very close to being perfectly accurate in the coming weeks and coming months.”
A state health department spokeswoman told the Chronicle last week that at that time there was no way of knowing the true rate at which Texans are testing positive for the virus, since the backlogged tests date back to March.
Abbott has based decisions on whether to shutdown businesses and public activity based on the positivity rate throughout the pandemic and has said that a sustained rate below 10 percent could prompt further reopenings.
The governor did not say whether he regretted using the skewed positivity rate earlier in the pandemic to make reopening decisions. But Abbott did say that “every decision that I’ve made has been a decision that is in the
best interest of the health and safety of the people of the state of Texas” and based upon the data and medical advice available to him at the time.
He stressed that the number of people hospitalized — data that is “very accurate and very current” — has been declining, an encouraging sign that Texas is on the mend from its midsummer surge.
On Sunday, the sevenday positivity rate stood at 16.2 percent, an increase from 12.7 percent the day prior. Such spikes have been common over the past month, as the backlogged data was being included with the daily test results.
Meanwhile, lab-confirmed COVID-19 hospitalizations continue on a downward trend, with about 5,200 Texans admitted as of Sunday. Nearly 11,000 people were hospitalized during the state’s peak in mid-July.
The state cleared its first backlog, including about 346,000 tests, in the days after a system upgrade on Aug. 1. Before the update, the state could process only 48,000 tests a day — creating spillover throughout July, when as many as 67,000 tests were conducted daily.
Officials have attributed the second backlog to a series of coding errors from three private labs — Quest Diagnostics, Walgreens and CHRISTUS Health — that added up to more than 500,000 outdated test results. State officials said most of the tests are from June and July, likely indicating that the state’s resurwith gence of coronavirus earlier this summer was worse than known at the time.
“There may still be some lingering challenges with some of the private labs and their ability to give us immediate, updated test results,” Abbott said. “We are continuing to work
those private labs for a quicker turnaround.”
The state sends lab results to counties for vetting before including them in its daily reports on the Texas coronavirus tally. Some counties are still working through the lab backlog, which state health officials last week said would be resolved within a few days.
That decentralized reporting system has also introduced errors into the state’s coronavirus statistics. Local health departments report their numbers to the state differently — some differentiating between old and new cases, while others group them together.
That disparity means that some of the state’s most recent testing numbers include results from weeks or months ago. State officials have since hired outside consultants to review the data collection process and decide whether to overhaul the current statistics presented to the public.
The state health department did not immediately respond Sunday to questions about the status of the consultants’ review.