New Reporting of COVID-19 Case Updates

The evolving nature of the COVID-19 outbreak has caused confusion and concern about how test results are reported. We are simplifying the way we report COVID-19 tests in order to make these statistics easier to understand.

Starting at noon today, March 13, 2020, we will only report Whatcom County statistics for:

• The total number of confirmed cases (test results that are positive for COVID-19).
• The total number of negative results (test results that are negative for COVID-19).
• Total number of deaths due to COVID-19. 

We will no longer report pending tests. Here is why: 

All COVID-19 tests are ordered by health care providers. In the early stages of testing, all tests were done by the Washington State Public Health lab in Shoreline and local health jurisdictions were involved in each test sent to the lab so we were able to report on pending results.

As testing has been expanded in Washington State, commercial labs and the UW Virology lab have begun testing for COVID-19, and healthcare providers are now using these labs for COVID-19 testing. Tests sent to these labs are outside of the public health reporting system. The Whatcom County Health Department is not informed of these pending tests, but is informed of positive and negative results. Therefore we cannot accurately report the total number of pending COVID-19 tests submitted to labs from Whatcom County.