TENNESSEE, USA — The Tennessee Department of Health will not issue data on COVID-19 cases and tests on Sunday, June 28, due to an unplanned shutdown of the state surveillance system.
Around 2 a.m. CDT on Sunday, the element of the National Electronic Disease Surveillance System Base System (NBS) that imports laboratory results encountered an unplanned shutdown, according to TDH. The issue was corrected by TDH and state information technology teams, and laboratory imports to NBS were restarted by 11 a.m.
Due to an ongoing backlog and the unplanned shutdown, a limited number of COVID-19 test results were imported into NBS in the last 24 hours. TDH said it will not release updated COVID-19 numbers today since the data are incomplete. This will also affect metropolitan health department partners and their data updates on Monday.
TDH said it uses 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, according to a statement from TDH.
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 a queue to be imported into the NBS system, according to TDH.
Officials said this issue is not unique to Tennessee and is affecting all NBS jurisdictions.
The TDH team said it has been working closely with the NBS vendor and Tennessee State Government information technology support to quickly implement fixes that have been identified.
Daily case counts and additional data will resume once the system returns to full functionality, according to TDH.
These technical issues may cause a delay in local public health officials contacting people recently diagnosed with COVID-19, according to TDH.
You are encouraged to use information online or contact your local health department if you were recently diagnosed with COVID-19 and have questions about next steps.