August 4, 2020 – CDPH has discovered an underreporting of COVID-19 cases due to technology issues with the electronic laboratory reporting system which reports into the state’s disease registry system (CalREDIE). However, patient care and test results are not affected or delayed by this issue. Laboratories continue to report test results directly to providers and hospitals, and hospitalization and death rates are not impacted as they are reported directly to the state through different systems. This is also likely leading to underreporting of cases at the local level as well.

While clinicians are still able to report to local health departments, this issue may impact a local public health department’s ability to receive all lab reports in order to case investigate and contact trace.

To address this issue, we have taken the following actions:

  • Deployed a team from the Department of Technology to assess the underlying code;
  • Engaged our local public health officers to ensure they have necessary information;
  • Instructed all laboratories in California to manually report all positive cases to the local public health departments.