Vermont reports 219 cases of Covid, an average of increasing cases

Updated at 4:29 p.m.

Vermont reported 219 new Covid-19 infections on Friday, the third highest daily total so far in the latest wave.

It also revised its record total for Thursday from 314 cases to 329. The health ministry said Thursday that day’s numbers were artificially high due to a computer glitch that delayed reporting of cases, but the ministry could not immediately say how many of these cases were new.

It was not immediately clear how many of the 219 cases reported on Friday were also the result of the problem, which could again paint a misleading picture of the state’s current Covid rates.

Andrea DeLaBruere, executive director of the Social Services Agency, said in a statement Friday that officials traced the error to Ellkay, an IT vendor at the Broad Institute, a Massachusetts lab with which the state is spending a contract.

In a Friday morning meeting with representatives from Ellkay, state officials learned that the error came from an added column in company data, DeLaBruere said. The problem, which began on September 9, has slowed the pace of reporting to state systems.

“They didn’t notice the problem because the higher test volumes masked the slowdown,” DeLaBruere said in the statement. Ellkay is now implementing new systems to monitor the program.

Ellkay learned of the problem at around the same time earlier this week from officials in Vermont, Rhode Island and Massachusetts.

The state is still trying to determine how many tests of Thursday’s and Friday’s case totals came from the backlog, she said.

If most cases had occurred in the past week, that would indicate the weekly total is still high – a record 1,406 cases, up from 975 cases the week before.

But if the delayed cases were initially detected over a longer period of time, it would suggest Vermont may not reach record rates.

The month of September is already on the way to overtaking August in terms of the number of Covid deaths. Vermont reported 19 of those deaths in August, according to the Department of Financial Regulation. Two deaths were added to the data on Friday, bringing the September total to 18.

This is still far less than the record 71 Covid deaths last December, when long-term care facilities were overwhelmed with epidemics and the holidays resulted in an increase in cases statewide. A total of 296 people have died during the pandemic in Vermont.

Forty-one people are currently hospitalized with the virus, according to the health ministry, including 12 who are in intensive care. That’s a slight increase from 10 people in intensive care on Thursday.

Covid and non-Covid intensive care patients have been straining Vermont hospitals for weeks now. University of Vermont Medical Center spokeswoman Annie Mackin said her intensive care unit reached 91 percent of capacity on Thursday, although she noted that number fluctuated.

The state is on the verge of reaching 2 million tests done so far in the pandemic. The rate of testing has increased in recent weeks as students return and Delta’s push pushes people to get tested.

Lola Duffort contributed to the reporting of this story.