NASHVILLE, TN  (WLAF) – The Tennessee Department of Health will not issue data on COVID-19 cases and tests on Sunday, June 28, 2020, due to an unplanned shutdown of the state surveillance system. TDH will resume daily provision of case counts and additional data once the system returns to full functionality and complete and accurate data can be provided.

TDH uses the National Electronic Disease Surveillance System Base System, known as NBS, developed by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to help local, state and territorial health departments manage reportable disease data and send it to CDC. This system houses data for all reportable diseases in Tennessee, including COVID-19, and is the system health department staff members use to perform public health case investigations.

Due to an extremely high volume of both COVID-19 and other laboratory test results being reported, there have been recent intermittent backlogs of labs in queue to be imported into the NBS system. This issue is not unique to Tennessee, and is affecting all NBS jurisdictions. The TDH team has been working closely with the NBS vendor and Tennessee State Government information technology support to quickly implement fixes that have been identified.

At approximately 3 a.m. EDT June 28, the element of NBS that imports laboratory results encountered an unplanned shutdown. This issue was corrected by TDH and state information technology teams, and laboratory imports to NBS were restarted by noon.

Due to the ongoing backlog and this unplanned shutdown, a limited number of COVID-19 test results were imported into NBS in the last 24 hours. TDH will not release updated COVID-19 numbers today since our data are incomplete. This will also affect our metropolitan health department partners and their data updates tomorrow.

These technical issues may cause a delay in local public health officials contacting people recently diagnosed with COVID-19. Please consult information online or contact your local health department if you were recently diagnosed with COVID-19 and have questions about next steps. (WLAF NEWS PUBLISHED – 06/28/2020-6PM)

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