Department of Health temporarily pauses reporting of negative COVID-19 test results

OLYMPIA—The Washington State Department of Health (DOH) asks the state’s laboratories that conduct the largest volume of tests to temporarily stop sending individual negative COVID-19 test results and instead send the department the aggregate number of negative test results per day. During this time, DOH dashboards will report positive cases each day, but not the total number of daily tests or percent positive.

The DOH disease reporting system can receive and process approximately 33,000 total test results per day but is currently receiving 30-50 thousand records per day, leading to a backlog. As of Saturday, 53,000 backlogged test results accumulated over the past two to three days. The backlog includes test results for COVID-19 and all other notifiable conditions such as tuberculosis.

Test result volumes are expected to continue increasing in the coming weeks as both disease and demand for testing increase. More testing sites and types of testing are also coming online across the state.

DOH has been working on expanding the system’s capacity in anticipation of a surge; however, recent disease growth has outpaced efforts, and without this temporary action, DOH would fall further behind.

The backlog of results means that the number of new COVID-19 cases reported the last two days is an undercount and likely does not reflect disease trends. The temporary action will ensure that the DOH receives timely positive COVID-19 results.

It is important to note that in addition to case and testing data, DOH officials have, and regularly look at, data from many different data sources to help us understand the scope, breadth, and direction of the pandemic. These include test positivity data submitted directly to the federal government by laboratories, data on emergency department visits for COVID-19 symptoms, and data on new hospitalizations for COVID-19 and total COVID-19 bed occupancy reported daily by hospitals. These data sources continue to show the exponential growth of COVID-19 spread and COVID-19 patients in the hospital.