SAN ANTONIO — Local leaders reported a drastic increase in confirmed coronavirus cases for Bexar County with 5,501, but the figure comes with an asterisk.
Unlike other reported daily totals in this pandemic – which for the county amounts to positive molecular and antigen tests collected over the previous 24 hours – Thursday's number includes a massive amount of previously uncounted cases dating back "about two weeks," according to Mayor Ron Nirenberg.
Essentially, Thursday's COVID-19 case total includes 4,810 positive tests that should have been reported previously over that two-week span. Not counting those cases in the backlog, 691 COVID-19 cases were reported in Bexar County over the last 24 hours.
"It's frustrating," Nirenberg said at Thursday's daily coronavirus briefing. "When we're examining this data on a daily basis, we want to make sure we're consistent. The delays in this data is making that very difficult on us."
KENS 5 asked the mayor about when the city knew about the backlog in the reporting process. He said found out about it Wednesday.
"This is all late-breaking," he said. "And we try to get that information out as quickly as we can."
The city said the kinks are worked out. KENS 5 pressed for further explanation, and Metro Health Medical Director Junda Woo said there is plenty of blame to go around.
"It was going into a folder we did not know about," she said. “Once we started inquiring about these results, we realized we were not receiving results. We started asking about them. And then we found out that we could access them."
The test results, dating to as far back as July 6, were in a folder. Around that time, Woo said, Metro Health switched labs.
"The reporting process got unaligned," she said.
"The state was dumping data in a place they didn't inform Metro Health department about," Nirenberg added.
Woo said it is safe to say miscommunication or lack of communication is to blame. The city said the backlog did not affect patient notification. It reports the lab notified the patients of their results within a few days. The delay does affect contact-tracing investigations.
Along with the 5,501 cases, 21 additional virus-related deaths were also reported in Bexar County. One of the victims is a woman in her twenties. Thursday's report brings the local death toll to 229.
