Houston Chronicle by Cayla Harris and Jeremy Blackman Sep. 15, 2020
As public schools were making plans to reopen in August, errors in the state’s calculations made the COVID-19 outbreak in Texas appear larger than it was, according to new state data released Monday.
On Aug. 11, when the state reported that the percentage of people testing positive for the coronavirus peaked at 24.5 percent, the actual rate was 12.5 percent. The metric fluctuated greatly that month as the state identified and began to work through 800,000 backlogged test results — some dating as far back as March — that state officials had initially missed. They blamed coding mishaps for the oversights.
For most days in August, the positivity rate reported by the state was higher than the actual percent of people testing positive. The updated data — based on a new calculation of the dates that tests were conducted rather than the dates that results were reported by labs to the state — shows a steady downward trend in the positivity rate since July, even as schools have begun reopening.
As of Sept. 13 — a week after Labor Day — the positivity rate stood at 6.71 percent, according to the new data. That is the lowest it has been since the first week of June.
More:
https://www.houstonchronicle.com/news/politics/texas_legislature/article/Updated-COVID-metric-shows-Texas-outbreak-on-the-15569201.php
