NEW ORLEANS — As Louisiana began loosening its stay at home order restrictions Friday, the state reported a spike of 710 newly reported cases of the coronavirus disease - nearly double the amount reported the day before.
However, state health officials say most of the new cases reported Friday were backlogged results from two labs that had not reported any results.
"Today, the [Louisiana Department of Health] reports 710 new cases, of which 381 came from two labs that are new to reporting. These labs previously have not reported and are now reporting all their historic lab results electronically," the department said Friday.
The LDH said the remaining 329 cases are from regular daily reporting from across Louisiana.
As of Friday, Louisiana has reported 28,711 positive cases of COVID-19 since the outbreak began on March 9. In total, 1,927 people have died across the state because of the virus.
What More Labs Means
State health leaders say they expect to see more labs onboarding in a similar fashion over the next two weeks as Louisiana ramps up testing even further across the state.
Depending on the number of labs that have not been included in the daily reports, it is possible that the state's reported number of confirmed cases is lower than the actual positive cases that have been diagnosed.
As the new labs come online, the state's reported number of cases could rise faster than previous weeks.
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