ST. LOUIS — When Missouri residents check their home county’s COVID-19 website, the number of confirmed cases may not be the same as what the state’s website shows.

On Monday night, for example, the state was reporting 91 cases in St. Louis. The city reported 150. And that’s far from the only example. Some counties seem to report more infections than the state. Others fewer.

At one point, the state health director tried to solve the problem with a new order, requiring laboratories to report positive tests to the state. The order itself says those tests should be reported “only” to the state — but that never really happened.

In the end, the discrepancies are all about new technology, old practices, mixed messages, and health departments trying hard to understand what’s in front of them.

St. Louis city — which serves as its own county — gets more data and updates its website more quickly than the state, St. Louis officials said. The state enters the cases into a database first, said St. Louis Department of Health spokesman Harold Bailey.

Staff from the city health department also call hospitals to ask for positive test results, Bailey said, instead of waiting for hospitals to call.