Our daily update is published. States reported 658k tests, 56k cases, and 1,485 deaths. The number of currently hospitalized COVID-19 patients continues to fall.

There are many data issues, which we note in this thread.

While the data continues to show declines in current hospitalizations, it is worth noting the major questions about both state and Federal hospitalization data collection over the past few weeks. The trends look good, but... https://covidtracking.com/blog/hospitalization-data-reported-by-the-hhs-vs-the-states-jumps-drops-and-other

While data issues continue to plague various states, the regional testing picture shows that the 7-day daily testing average appears to have peaked in the South on July 27.

In better news, New York has continued to test large numbers of people while cases have remained consistently, impressively low.

The numbers we’re presenting here do not include the 220k tests that North Carolina pulled out of its numbers today because of a reporting error. To more accurately present the national trends, we set the state's new tests to 0 for today in these charts. https://twitter.com/COVID19Tracking/status/1293684375423340544?s=20

Texas is another major question mark. For reasons that are not quite clear yet, the state has been aggressively reducing the number of tests it had counted but not assigned to a county for the last 10 days since a system upgrade.

Based on local reporting and data from counties, it appears these reductions are contributing to the very low state-wide testing numbers, though no one has yet explained why.

California reported more than 6k backlogged cases. The state has now committed to assigning those cases to the correct date. We'll adjust our values as soon as the state makes the correct date figures available. This will shift many positive cases reported today to earlier dates.

Washington has acknowledged their issues with reporting negative tests. Hopefully we see those numbers return to normal in the near future.

https://www.doh.wa.gov/Emergencies/Coronavirus

Florida also had a major problem with a case backlog in Miami, which added 4,000 cases to the state's totals. https://twitter.com/HealthyFla/status/1293568494475378688?s=20