ESCANABA — Michigan’s official listing of COVID-19 cases — including cases in the Upper Peninsula — was not updated Friday due to technical difficulties.

Typically, the COVID-19 case listing on www.michigan.gov is updated every afternoon. However, Friday’s update was initially said to be delayed until approximately 6 p.m. At that time, it was announced that an update would not be shared that day.

A message posted to the site stated that Friday’s number of new cases was smaller than expected due to an issue with the reporting of electronic lab results. Many received lab messages were improperly formatted, temporarily blocking some valid results from being processed and entered into the reporting system. As of Friday evening, efforts to fix the problem were underway.

Since valid results will be entering the system over the next few days, higher-than-expected case counts will likely be seen for a while. This is not expected to affect the state’s seven-day rolling average or cases by date of onset in the data.