The North Carolina Department of Health and Human Services announced that today’s COVID-19 Data Dashboard includes a large number of cases from tests performed at FastMed Urgent Care clinics during December 2020 and January 2021 that had not been previously reported to NCDHHS. These delayed reports account for 7,912 of the 12,079 COVID-19 cases reported today. Cases of COVID-19 in North Carolina have been trending downward since the second week of January.
In addition to the one-time increase in positive cases, the delayed reports from FastMed also added approximately 40,000 total test results to the dashboard.
FastMed has fixed its reporting process, and the state is now receiving results from the company. This delay in reporting to NCDHHS did not impact patient notifications or care from FastMed. Prior to December 2020, all testing from FastMed was done by third-party labs and test results were reported to NCDHHS from those labs and included in the NC COVID-19 Dashboard.
Updated case numbers, test information and other COVID-19 metrics are available on the NC COVID-19 Data Dashboard: https://covid19.ncdhhs.gov/dashboard.