County health departments in North Texas say a change in reporting by the Texas Department of State Health Services is leading to false numbers of new cases. Governor Greg Abbott says the agency is trying to work through a backlog of cases that was never reported.
"It took a while for all of that data to be filtered into the system," Abbott says. "We used a very robust team that came in and corrected all the data metrics."
Wednesday, Dallas County reported 399 additional cases of COVID-19 and five deaths. Of those 399 cases, though, Dallas County Health and Human Services says 44 were reported by the Texas Department of State Health Services and date to earlier this year.
Sixteen of those 44 cases were from April, 26 were from May and two were from June.
Tarrant County reported 346 additional cases Wednesday, saying 229 were from the backlog. Denton County reported 106 additional cases, but Denton County Public Health says it has received more than 800 cases over the past several days that had not been previously reported.
Collin County announced 46 cases Wednesday and says totals "may fluctuate based on cases that have been transferred, duplicates or previously unreported from previous days."
"Now, we have good, accurate information flow, but there may be still another day or two while that information is leveled out," Abbott says. "But by the time this week ends, we should have pretty accurate data."
Despite the change in reporting, Abbott says other stats still hold up. Wednesday, the Department of State Health Services reported 5,974 patients hospitalized with COVID-19. That was the lowest number of patients since June 29 and a drop from the highest number of 10,893 COVID-19 patients in the hospital July 22.
The rate of tests coming back positive was 10.81% Wednesday, down from a high of 24.5% August 11. Abbott has said the number should drop below ten percent before restrictions are lifted.
"We have the good, positive downtrend for more than two weeks for each of those metrics right now," he says. "We just need everybody in Dallas and across the State of Texas to continue these safe practices they've been using that have led to these downtrends in hospitalizations as well as people testing positive."