SUNDAY UPDATE: Boone County reports 25 new COVID-19 cases

COLUMBIA, Mo. (KMIZ)

UPDATE 7:00 P.M.: The Columbia/Boone County Health Department reports there have been 5,223 COVID-19 cases in the county as of Sunday.

There were 365 active cases of the virus.

New cases dropped on Sunday. The health department reported 25 new cases, down from 66 on Saturday.

Eighteen Boone County residents were hospitalized on Sunday. There were 27 patients in ICUs.

The five-day average was at 51 on Sunday.

ORIGINAL: The Department of Health and Senior Services reported an error on the state's COVID-19 dashboard on Sunday.

According to a press release, a database extract error on Saturday resulted in an incorrect inflation of reported cases going back over several days, which suggest that 5,020 cases had been added in 24 hours.

Staff is working to correct the error and the dashboard will be updated once it is fixed.

“When this issue was initially raised Saturday morning, the dashboard team began working through the data to identify the problem and are working through the weekend to correct the underlying issue,” said Dr. Randall Williams, DHSS Director in a statement. “Missourians should feel confident that we appreciate their feedback and continue to adapt our processes to ensure effective and accountable reporting to our citizens.”

The release also stated DHSS is currently in the process of migrating testing and case data into one new consolidated system called EpiTrax. DHSS said the transition is to standardize data management and prevent data reporting issues in the furute.

“We are committed to continually improving our practices,” said Williams. “While our updated internal processes serve the purpose of reporting data with greater granularity, finalizing the new approach to replace manual entry presents our team with technical challenges that we are working through.”