Louisiana confirmed a massive number of new coronavirus cases Thursday – 2,726, bringing the total statewide above 9,100 – as officials discovered a surge of new cases from previous days and warned the New Orleans region is still on track to run out of hospital beds and ventilators in the coming days.

While the state shattered its previous records for a single-day increase in new confirmed cases, officials cautioned the figures don’t accurately show the growth rate of the virus because of a backlog in tests that has broken through in recent days.

The number of new cases confirmed by the Louisiana Department of Health represents a 42% increase from Wednesday, and comes after two days of large spikes in confirmed cases.

Gov. John Bel Edwards called the increase Thursday “jarring,” but we warned people that the figure is so large not because the state necessarily saw 42% more people contract the virus in the past day, but because of delays in test results. He said the "logjam is breaking" and the state is now getting results from days ago or longer.

There are two main issues delaying the testing: Private labs are backed up all over the country, delaying results, and some labs in Louisiana are slow in getting their information to the state.

“We want them to be doing the testing,” said Dr. Alex Billioux, assistant secretary for the state Office of Public Health. “What we’re trying to work out is how to get the results to us in a timely fashion.”

The vast majority – 95% – of the new cases confirmed Thursday were from those commercial labs, meaning most of the new cases were from people tested several days ago, as such labs have faced lengthy delays across the country in verifying results.

“We have one of the highest per-capita rates of testing in the country,” Edwards said on a New Orleans radio show Thursday morning. “But these reports are not as smooth and as timely as we’d like them to be.”

The delays in test results have frustrated efforts by health officials to understand exactly how well Louisiana’s social distancing efforts – including a stay-at-home order that will run at least through April 30th – are working. State and local leaders have continued to plead with residents to comply with the stay-at-home order and avoid leaving the house unless absolutely necessary.

Edwards said other metrics, like hospitalizations and deaths, are better indicators, and officials maintain that the trajectory the state is on is still troubling. For instance, The New Orleans region is still on track to run out of ventilators by April 7th and hospital beds April 12th.

However, the growth is likely not as exponential as the 42% jump in new cases suggests, Edwards said.

The death toll on Thursday rose by 37 new confirmed deaths, to 310. And officials have expressed growing concern that Louisiana is more at risk of an outsized number of deaths than other places, both because the state has a significant amount of the virus and because its residents are less healthy than other places.

“If there is a place to draw hope here it is that these new data reveal our COVID-19 related hospitalization and death rates, while still concerningly high, are trending more in line with the national average,” Billioux said.

The governor pointed to modeling done by the University of Washington that shows Louisiana could see 1,834 deaths related to COVID-19. And while Edwards on Thursday extended his stay-at-home order until April 30th, that model assumes mitigation measures are in place a month longer, until May 30th.

On Wednesday the number of coronavirus patients hospitalized in Louisiana grew by 10% from the day before. The number of people hospitalized rose by another 10% Thursday, to 1,639.

The number of those patients on ventilators, the live-saving machines in short supply across the country, only rose by 3.5%, to 507 people.

Still, hospitals in the New Orleans region are facing acute shortages of ventilators, staff, protective equipment and beds, among other things.

Ochsner Health System CEO Warner Thomas said on a media call with reporters that a looming shortage of staff has emerged as a top issue, and the system was recruiting nurses from out of state.

Initially, Ochsner relied on labs at the Mayo Clinic to run their tests for coronavirus, executives said, but the clinic’s labs were inundates with thousands of other tests and more than a week ago, Ochsner stood up its own in-house testing in New Orleans and Shreveport, where results come back within 24 hours. Still, the hospital is waiting on results from about 450 older tests from the Mayo Clinic, which would contribute to a confusing of the state’s data.

Soon, the system will start using rapid tests that could offer results in as little as five minutes, officials said.

As the state works to stand up a 2,000-bed temporary hospital at the Ernest N. Morial Convention Center in New Orleans, Edwards said officials are surveying other facilities across the state for similar facilities. He said modeling does not show any other region of the state besides New Orleans running out of beds for the next 14 days, but once they do the state will pull the trigger on such “step-down” facilities, where patients go after they’re well enough to leave the hospital to free up beds.

The governor said he anticipates every major metro area in the state having such a facility.

Staff writers Andrea Gallo, Jessica Williams and Jeff Adelson contributed to this story.