Internet outage delays COVID-19 reporting

An outage that affected state government’s internet service Tuesday disrupted New Mexico’s daily COVID-19 case update for a day.

According to a news release, state Health Department officials said the electronic laboratory reporting system was disrupted, meaning no numbers will be available until Wednesday.

The state said Tuesday’s and Wednesday’s reports will be published separately when they become available.

The state Department of Information Technology is investigating the root cause of the disruption.

“The Department of Information Technology was alerted of intermittent disruption of Internet services this morning,” technology Secretary John Salazar said in the news release issued Tuesday afternoon. “DoIT personnel immediately began troubleshooting the issues with Lumen CenturyLink engineers, who after several hours of troubleshooting discovered the source of the issue and were able to fix it in the early afternoon.”

Among the statistics the state provides is the number of hospitalizations on a given day — a key metric as the state’s hospitals teeter on the brink of being overwhelmed. Human Services Department spokeswoman Jodi McGinnis Porter said 925 patients were being treated in hospitals for COVID-19 on Tuesday, including 171 with intubation.

The Department of Health said it continues to immediately notify individuals with positive test results and actively investigate all cases that are reported to the state throughout the day. It added the disruption will not affect the cumulative reporting of COVID-19 cases or the evaluation of the state’s epidemiological data.