With the backlog of nearly 300,000 lab reports finally cleared, California officials confirmed Friday that coronavirus cases have officially decreased over the past two weeks — a highly-touted trend that was thrown into question after the records snafu.

The state has finished sorting through the delayed coronavirus test results from the past two weeks, Gov. Gavin Newsom said Friday, with an encouraging conclusion: Statewide, the positivity rate has decreased to about 6.2%, down nearly a full percentage point since before the backlog was reported.

Of the 7,934 new statewide cases reported Thursday, the majority or about 4,429 were from prior weeks, following a similar trend on Wednesday. Next week, the state will provide a county-level breakdown of backlogged data, but Newsom overall characterized the fresh positivty and case rates as moving in “a positive direction.”

“This will be the last day we will have to report backlogged cases,” Newsom said. “This completes one hundred percent of our efforts to address the backlog and update our case numbers.”

Local officials were left in the lurch starting about two weeks ago, when Health and Human Services Secretary Dr. Marky Ghaly reported that a series of errors had led the state to underreport coronavirus cases starting in late July. Counties were forced to rely on spreadsheets for data while the state worked to understand the scope of the problem and fix it.

“We’re back to feeling blind. We don’t know how the epidemic is trending,” said Santa Clara County Health Officer Dr. Sara Cody said at the time. “This lack of data doesn’t allow us to know where this epidemic is heading, how fast it’s growing — or not.”

By Aug. 7, the state had announced a fix, but Newsom ordered an investigation into the series of events that led to the backlog. A total of 296,000 records were ultimately affected.

Despite local officials’ anxiety, epidemiologists maintained throughout the drama that coronavirus cases were likely decreasing — even if they couldn’t be certain of how much. Hospitalizations statewide have decreased dramatically since an all-time peak of more than 7,000 patients on July 21st, indicating that the wave of infections from early June was likely tapering off.

That was enough to prompt a moment of rare optimism from the governor Wednesday, when he declared that the state was “turning a corner” on the pandemic.

“These are specific proof points that connect to some optimism that what we’re doing as a state … that what you are doing is working,” Newsom said. “We want to continue to see these numbers go down.”