Older Data Shows Spike In Coronavirus In Alabama The Last 2 Weeks

MONTGOMERY, AL — After more than a month with 14-day totals for new COVID-19 cases staying under 10,000, Alabama is now averaging more than 1,000 new COVID-19 cases per day over the last two weeks.

The latest report from the Alabama Department of Public Health shows 14,652 new cases of the virus in the state over the last 14 days. This number does, however, include testing locations that have just recently started reporting to the ADPH.

"While ADPH has long-term reporting relationships with many labs in Alabama and other states, new labs have begun to provide testing for SARS-CoV-2 during the COVID-19 pandemic," the ADPH said in a statement Monday. "There have been instances where ADPH was not aware of some of these laboratories, and these labs were not familiar with mandatory reporting of notifiable diseases. We had an entity transmit data on October 2 which increased our daily number of cases for October 2 and our cumulative total for our October 3 dashboard update"

When ADPH becomes aware of a new lab performing SARS-CoV-2 testing, it educates the labs regarding uploading data in a timely, accurate electronic format, the statement said. "As these labs were not reporting to ADPH until they understood the requirement, their data contains older reports which increases case numbers. ADPH continues to make all efforts possible to identify new labs and bring them into the electronic reporting process in order to capture the positive and negative labs for case investigation and data accuracy."

The state has confirmed 140,922 cases of COVID-19 since the pandemic began, and reports 18,791 probable cases of the virus. Probable cases include antibody test results or rapid antigen tests.

The state reports that 67,948 people are presumed to have recovered from the virus.

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