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Tarrant County leaders cautiously optimistic about COVID-19 efforts despite case backlog
A backlog from the state created what looked like a spike in COVID-19 cases in Tarrant County over the weekend.
FORT WORTH, Texas - A backlog from the state created what looked like a spike in COVID-19 cases in Tarrant County over the weekend.
But leaders say those cases aren't new and there are plenty of positives to focus on.
The number of new COVID-19 cases for Monday in Tarrant County totaled 256, but over the weekend the numbers reflected more than five times that.
On Saturday alone, 1,487 new positive cases were added. But more than 1200 of those officials explain are more than a month old.
“Some of these cases went back into July is what we found,” said Tarrant County Judge Glen Whitley
Whitley said the discovery by state officials of the backlog is frustrating and additional cases from last month could possibly be tabulated within the next several days.
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The same backlog led to a staggering case dump in Dallas County on Sunday – 5,361 old cases – most from July, but some dating back to March.
“What our public health director has said is basically their system could not handle all of these statistics and all of the numbers coming from the private labs and every place else,” Whitley said.
“We’ve asked if this was not a result of them changing the way they were accounting for things or doing things. They assured us it wasn’t, that it was them just trying to catch up with the software they have, the hardware they have and being able to get the numbers put in.”
Whitley says he’s hopeful Tarrant County’s COVID-19 numbers, despite the update with backlogged case data, continue trending downward. He said his optimism takes into account the county’s current hospital landscape.
“We were talking with one of our CEOs this morning and they said the number of patients in the ICU cases was down by about a third. Things are looking very good, knock on wood, as far as that goes, but we can’t let [our guard] down,” Whitley said.
RELATED: Interactive map of Texas COVID-19 cases