A software glitch has led to a massive spike in Queensland’s number of COVID-19 cases, including infections dating back to last month.
The state recorded 18,678 new cases today, but Queensland Health said they included infections since June 10.
This means that the number of cases in recent weeks has been higher than the reported daily totals, which have been between 8,000 and 9,000 in recent days.
Of the 18,678 cases, 4,713 were from the last reporting period.
loading
A department spokesman told the ABC the administrative error was due to a backlog of data being loaded into the system, with dates ranging from June 10 to July 23.
The spokesperson said that although some PCR tests were not counted, patients were informed of their positive result.
Acting health director Peter Aitken said the problem was that several private laboratories were catching up and reporting to them.
“As part of their normal process, treating physicians were notified, patients were notified. This is just a problem with some of the computer systems talking to each other.
“I think it’s more of a software issue that we’re working on with the vendors.”
Hospitalizations are down
There are 30 people with COVID-19 in intensive care units and 861 in hospitals, down from 906 yesterday.
It is the fifth consecutive day that hospitalizations have decreased.
Dr Aitken said it was unclear whether the peak had been reached.
“I think it’s too early to say. The phrase I would use at this point would be ‘Cautiously optimistic,'” he said.
“We’ve had a couple of days in a row where we’ve had numbers down, and hopefully that means people are doing all the things we’ve talked about.”
Dr Aitken said it was reassuring that the number of reinforcements had increased.
“We know that, since the announcement of access to booster doses, there has been a three- to fourfold increase in booster dose taking,” he said.
“People are doing these things, and hopefully now we’re starting to see a change in the numbers as a result.”
Space for play or pause, M for mute, left and right arrows for search, up and down arrows for volume.
What you need to know about the coronavirus:
Loading form…