A “reporting error” in North Carolina caused the state to overcount its coronavirus tests by 200,000 since the start of the pandemic, according to an announcement from state officials on Wednesday.
The error, which state officials largely blamed the lab for, did not have an effect on certain measures, including the total number of positive cases from the state.
Mandy Cohen, who serves as secretary of North Carolina’s Department of Health and Human Services, pointed a finger at LabCorp Diagnostics for giving the state two different daily test count numbers when data was submitted.
“The positive cases are reported electronically,” Cohen said. “Those continue to be accurate. The number that we are correcting today is just the total cumulative lab tests.”
According to a news release from state health officials, the tally for completed tests is calculated in a different way than that of positive test counts, which are handled using data from an individual, patient level.
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