New COVID-19 cases, deaths won’t be reported by Florida DOH

The Florida Department of Health has sent near-daily novel coronavirus reports since March on test results, hospitalizations, deaths and more. But a private lab resending 400,000 test results has clogged the system.

On Saturday, health officials said that Helix Laboratory, a private lab, sent the DOH about 400,000 previously reported COVID-19 test results on Friday night. This has caused the state to put a hold on releasing Saturday’s state coronavirus updates.

This means reporting of the total number of new cases, deaths and hospitalizations in the state will be put on hold until Sunday.

“The massive size of the data file and the need to deduplicate hundreds of thousands of results prevented the Department of Health’s automatic reporting system from processing yesterday’s results as it normally does,” health officials said in a statement.

State epidemiologists are working to sort through the data, which will take a day to finish.

While this affects the state’s ability to release virus reports, this does not mean residents won’t get their test results. Notification of positive or negative results is done by the lab or entity that performs the test.

The state health department may not be able to release information, but the Florida Agency for Health Care Administration dashboard is showing new hospitalization figures for Saturday.

As of 4:45 p.m., there were 2,077 COVID-19 patients admitted into hospitals throughout the state, a drop of 66 compared to Friday morning, according to the dashboard.

That is a significant decrease from early August, when more than 5,000 COVID-19 patients were admitted into hospitals throughout the state

Of Saturday’s hospitalizations, 242 were in Miami-Dade (a drop of 15), 203 in Broward (down by eight), 113 in Palm Beach (up by five) and two in Monroe (a drop by one), according to the agency.