California has cleared the backlog of nearly 300,000 coronavirus test results that has hampered its virus strategy over the past two weeks, Gov. Gavin Newsom said Friday, and officials got the news they were hoping for: COVID-19 is trending downward in the state.
Many already suspected that was the case, but the records snafu meant public health leaders couldn’t be sure.
Now the state has finished sorting through the delayed lab reports and reached the encouraging conclusion that California’s “positivity rate,” a key statistic capturing the percentage of coronavirus tests that come back positive, has decreased by nearly a full percentage point since the backlog of new cases was reported, to 6.2 percent. Newsom called the change “a very encouraging sign.”
It also will allow the state to resume its county “watchlist” process, stalled by the backlog. That means counties showing progress in fighting the virus could again receive permission to take reopening steps.
But after a summer surge of new coronavirus infections and deaths, which forced California to slam the brakes on its reopening and to shutter businesses again, the state continues to hit milestones that are a testament to COVID-19’s widespread impact.
The state’s death toll from coronavirus passed 11,000 on Friday, according to data compiled by this news organization.
And more than 600,000 people in California have now tested positive for the illness, making this the first state to pass that threshold. While Newsom said the state has been able to increase the number of COVID-19 tests it can conduct, he warned the virus remains “significantly more prevalent than those numbers, even in California, would suggest.”
The data backlog left local officials in the lurch starting about two weeks ago, when Health and Human Services Secretary Dr. Mark Ghaly reported that a series of errors — among them, a failed link to one of the country’s largest testing labs — had led the state to underreport coronavirus cases starting in late July. Counties were forced to comb spreadsheets in search of reliable data while the state worked to understand the scope of the problem and fix it. A total of 296,000 records were affected.
“We’re back to feeling blind. We don’t know how the epidemic is trending,” Santa Clara County Health Officer Dr. Sara Cody said at the time. “This lack of data doesn’t allow us to know where this epidemic is heading, how fast it’s growing — or not.”
By Aug. 7, the state had announced a fix that took a week to implement, as Newsom ordered an investigation into the series of events that led to the backlog.
Two days after that, California Department of Public Health Director Dr. Sonia Angell, a key leader in the state’s virus response, abruptly resigned. While Newsom has sidestepped repeated questions about Angell’s departure, he has said her department was aware of the data glitches for about a week before they were reported to the governor’s office.
Of the 7,934 new statewide cases reported Thursday, more than 4,400 were from prior weeks, following a similar trend on Wednesday, Newsom said. Next week, the state will provide a county-level breakdown of backlogged data, but Newsom overall characterized the fresh positivity and case rates as moving in “a positive direction.”
“This will be the last day we will have to report backlogged cases,” Newsom said Friday. “This completes 100 percent of our efforts to address the backlog and update our case numbers.”
On Monday, Newsom said, the state will restart its watchlist monitoring of virus trends, which could allow improving counties to restart banned activities and reopen businesses. However, a recent Bay Area News Group analysis showed that no county in the region is close to meeting the criteria needed to get off the watchlist.
Despite local officials’ anxiety, epidemiologists maintained throughout the drama that coronavirus cases were likely decreasing, even if they couldn’t be certain of how much.
Hospitalizations statewide have decreased dramatically since an all-time peak of more than 7,000 patients on July 21st, indicating that the wave of infections from early June was likely tapering off.
It prompted a moment of rare optimism from Newsom on Wednesday, when he declared that the state was “turning a corner” on the pandemic.
“These are specific proof points that connect to some optimism that what we’re doing as a state … that what you are doing, is working,” Newsom said. “We want to continue to see these numbers go down.”
