For the third time this month and the second day in a row, labs are reporting their coronavirus test results to the Louisiana Department of Health for the first time, leading to what looks like an unusually high number of newly reported cases.
The state is reporting 827 new coronavirus cases Thursday. That’s the largest daily increase in positive cases since April 10, when there were 970 new cases at the peak of the outbreak in Louisiana. But Gov. John Bel Edwards said the bump is due to a new lab turning in a lot of old test results all at once.
During a virtual town hall meeting hosted by The Advocate newspaper Thursday morning, Edwards said a new lab reported 609 cases to the state, with some tests dating back to March.
Edwards said if you take those out of the total, the number of new cases coming from the usual sources is 218.
“That’s really in line with where we’ve been over the last several days,” he said.
