The number of active COVID-19 cases reported daily on the Hamilton County Health Department website dropped from 1,505 to 603 on Thursday, raising eyebrows across the county and prompting an explanation from department officials.
Officials say the 902-case decrease was the result of several factors, including a downward trend in new reported cases and a “data clean-up” of cases that were no longer active but had failed to automatically roll off the active case list in the standard 14-day period.
“The Health Department applied a ‘data clean-up’ because some recovered/inactive cases had not rolled off automatically as they were supposed to. Cases were manually removed that were no longer active. Moving forward, this should not be a problem with cases not rolling off timely,” according to a news release issued by the health department on Friday.
Another factor contributing to the dramatic decline in cases was that the department “changed the automatic roll-off of ‘active’ status from 21 days to 14 days earlier this month to align with Tennessee Department of Health and [federal] guidance,” the release states.
Active cases are the number of people who’ve tested positive for the coronavirus still in their infectious period, which is typically 10 days, but can be longer.