That’s why Riverside County had to correct inaccuracies in COVID-19 data – Press Enterprise

A computer code offered to counties by the California Department of Public Health in November as coronavirus cases began to increase statewide has caused discrepancies in the numbers of cases and deaths released by Riverside County, that’s why epidemiologists and data researchers spent time last month correcting those numbers, the county’s chief epidemiologist said on Thursday, July 22.

Last month, the county halted the publication of daily figures to reconcile inaccurate data. County officials confirmed on Thursday that they have resumed publishing daily data on COVID-19 now that the inaccuracies have been resolved.

State public health officials proposed the new code in November to simplify matters, but it ended up causing complications and the county had to correct the data, causing delays in releasing information to the public. said Wendy Hetherington, chief of epidemiology for Riverside County.

“During the (winter) outbreak, the number of new cases was causing a backlog in terms of staff able to handle the numbers,” she said. “So the CRPD gave counties the ability to enable an automatic confirmation feature in the disease notification system to speed up the process so that we can bring cases to the contact tracing stage. “

Before the onset of the winter wave, Hetherington said, county epidemiologists and data researchers received lab reports and confirmed each report “manually.” This meant that staff members would review each case and match them with a positive lab test to confirm each case. This is what differentiates a confirmed case of COVID-19 from a suspected case, she said. This process became untenable during the winter wave.

But the automatic confirmation feature, which health officials hoped would clear the backlogs and speed up the process, caused problems when the system confirmed a number of cases without lab reports showing positive test results, Hetherington said.

“We found out that some probable cases were also marked by the system as confirmed,” she said.

Riverside County used this code between November and February, when cases peaked, and reverted to manual confirmation of cases after that, Hetherington said. After reconciling the numbers, they found the county had 2,000 fewer COVID-19 cases during that four-month period and over-reported fewer than 10 deaths during that time.

“A few thousand cases can seem like a lot,” she said of overreported cases. “But when you look at a total of 304,000 cases, it’s less than 1%.”

These types of errors remind everyone of the complexity of real-time data reporting that county health departments were forced to make during the coronavirus pandemic, Hetherington said.

“Typically, when it comes to other communicable diseases like influenza, we report monthly or annually, which means we have time to spot any discrepancies and correct them before disclosing information to the government. public, ”she said. “Here we are looking at the data in real time. There is therefore a risk of error. “

But that does not detract from the severity of the pandemic or the credibility of the information presented by health officials, Hetherington said, adding that Riverside was not the only county with this discrepancy in numbers issue.

“The important thing to remember is that the exact number of cases or deaths is not as important as the trends,” she said. “Right now we have an upward trend and that is definitely a cause for concern.”