DHEC reports issue that affected COVID-19 reporting is fixed; releases new data Share Updated: 3:37 PM EST Jan 16, 2021 Katie Smithson Share Updated: 3:37 PM EST Jan 16, 2021 Katie Smithson The internal database used by the South Carolina Department of Health and Environmental Control (DHEC) to track COVID-19 cases is back up and running, after experiencing software problems that caused incomplete case reporting for several days, DHEC said Saturday.DHEC officials said DHEC did not cause the software issue, and the vendor has fixed the problem as of this morning.As soon as the software error was identified, DHEC added a disclaimer to its daily case reporting webpage to provide public notice that data was known to be incomplete, according to officials.South Carolina's Infectious Disease and Outbreak Network (SCION), used by DHEC for disease surveillance, is serviced by software company Conduent, and DHEC worked closely with the vendor around the clock to repair the software problem. The database issue was caused by slowdowns and delays in how SCION was able to process COVID-19 test results that are sent to the system electronically. The majority of laboratories and facilities that report negative and positive test results to DHEC do so by submitting an electronic lab report (ELR) to SCION. This software issue did not lose any data and was not in any way a security breach. DHEC said COVID-19 death reporting was not impacted by this software error; it only affected case counts. A historical breakdown of reported cases and corrected cases for each day of the software error is available here, current as of 11:59 p.m. on Jan. 15.With the corrected data, the highest number of cases in a single day occurred on Jan. 8 with 6,824 positive cases. Because of our 24-hour data delay, this number would have been reported out in our Jan. 10 update. Historical updates by day are available on the county-level dashboard here.For the latest COVID-19 information and data, visit scdhec.gov/COVID19.