Reporting Problems Related To Local And State COVID-19 Case Data
Sonora, CA — Tuolumne County Health Officer Dr. Liza Ortiz says there are issues with the state’s COVID-19 reporting system related to both submitting local results and receiving new data from outside labs.
Last week we reported that Tuolumne County has met the requirements to be placed on the state’s monitoring list as the number of cases exceeded 100 per 100,000 over a 14 day period. However, the county has not officially been added to the state’s list.
At today’s board of supervisors meeting, Dr. Ortiz stated, “We are working daily with the state on issues with data reporting. We have identified that they are not seeing the same data that we are seeing, and reporting, into the system. We have identified that there are significant delays across the state with data not coming into the state reporting system from labs. We expect that there will be some further announcements (from the state) about those difficulties.”
Further complicating the issue is that Tuolumne County Public Health has not been receiving results from numerous outside labs over the past five days.
Dr. Ortiz says, “Normally we get a huge number of results from major labs like Quest, Labcore, all of the large send-out labs, as well as some of the smaller ones that have popped up since this epidemic has happened, and we aren’t seeing those come in.”
Adding, “What we can see are (only) the ones that we have direct access to, and what is coming through Adventist Health.”
While the number of cases has dropped over the past few days in Tuolumne County, Dr. Ortiz stated that she has no idea what the accurate count is, due to the state’s reporting problems.
She anticipates that the State of California will release additional information about the matter later today.
New Compliance Division:
Also related to COVID-19, Dr. Ortiz says the county’s new education and enforcement division has received 190 complaints about a total of 127 businesses. It has resulted in 28 site visits. 30-percent of the businesses are successfully adding compliance measures.
