Update: The COVID-19 dashboard was updated to display the correct positivity rate Wednesday morning.
The sudden spike in positive tests on the COVID-19 dashboard is a mistaken report, the University of Michigan’s Office of Public Affairs told The Michigan Daily Tuesday.
Tuesday evening, the data visual portrayed a jump in positivity rate from 2.7% during the week of Aug. 15 to 18.5% during the week of Aug. 22. The dashboard also reported an 11.1% positivity rate for the week of Aug. 29.
Additionally, the COVID-19 dashboard reported that 303 tests were completed the week of Aug. 22 while the Community Sampling and Tracking Program dashboard says there were 2,277 tests completed within the last eight days.
University spokeswoman Kim Broekhuizen wrote in an email to The Daily there was a reporting error resulting in some of the testing data being accidentally left out from the dashboard.
“Due to a reporting error involving the weekly testing data feed, data was ‘dropped’ from the dashboard,” Broekhuizen wrote. “We are adding a notation to the dashboard.”
Broekhuizen wrote the issue has been identified. The correct numbers would be updated by Wednesday, Sept. 1, she wrote.
As of Wednesday morning, the COVID-19 dashboard was updated to display a positivity rate of 2.5% during the week of Aug. 22 and 1.4% for the week of Aug. 29. The number of completed COVID-19 tests were also corrected, showing a total of 2,827 tests during the week of Aug. 22.
Daily News Editor Lily Gooding can be reached at goodingl@umich.edu.