Department of Health temporarily pauses reporting of negative COVID-19 test results

OLYMPIA—The Washington State Department of Health (DOH) asks the state’s laboratories that conduct the largest volume of tests to temporarily stop sending individual negative COVID-19 test results and instead send the department the aggregate number of negative test results per day. During this time, DOH dashboards will report positive cases each day, but not the total number of daily tests or percent positive.

The DOH disease reporting system can receive and process approximately 33,000 total test results per day but is currently receiving 30-50 thousand records per day, leading to a backlog....