Edhat Staff
By edhat staff
Santa Barbara County officials announced a technological error within the state’s COVID-19 reporting has severely undercounted cases.
On Monday night, the state informed all county public health departments of a technical issue causing a significant undercount of completed COVID-19 tests and test results throughout California, including the local level.
When tests are conducted throughout the state, information is inputted into the state’s California Reportable Disease Information Exchange (CalREDIE). While examining a steep decline in the number of tests completed and positive test results, the state discovered information was delayed into the system or not reported at all, said Supervisor Gregg Hart.
“The result is a serious concern of a significant undercount of positive COVID-19 test results throughout California,” said Hart. “This statewide issue has likely affected the accuracy of our local numbers.”
In response, the California Department of Public Health (CDPH) is working with counties and labs to revert to a manual reporting system as well as upgrading servers and systems to validate reports. The backlog of numbers will process approximately 250,000 to 300,000 records statewide.
The state announced today it identified the sources of the technical failures and hope the system will be back online late next week.
In the meantime, the local Public Health Department (PHD) is working to manually record local case data and confirmed patient care and testing results have not been affected or delayed by this issue.
PHD Director Dr. Van Do-Reynoso stated their department noticed glitches in the CalREDIE system long before they were contacted on Monday and were in constant communication with the state about the errors.
“We are providing you with the best information that we currently have. I want to stress that our local data is underreporting of the actual number of tests performed, the case rate, and the testing positivity rates until the state resolves their data issues with electronic lab records and CalREDIE,” said Do-Reynoso.
Gatherings & Youth Sports
Health officials have previously urged local residents to partake in virtual-only celebrations of Old Spanish Days Fiesta this year. Earlier today they released a statement that the annual Fiesta Cruiser Run should not take place due to COVID-19 concerns.
Gatherings of any size, meaning anyone who is outside of your household, are not safe and mixing and mingling in the most common way to spread COVID-19, explained Health Officer Dr. Henning Ansorg.
“Fiesta needs to be a virtual event this year,” said Hart.
Dr. Ansorg also stated that all youth sports, whether school-based or through club and recreation, must be conditioning-based on individual skill building without the use of equipment.
When comparing the difference between school and youth sports, Dr. Ansorg explained that youth sports are only allowed under very narrow circumstances meaning it must be outdoors with zero contact between participants.
The Numbers As We Know It
The PHD is reporting the latest COVID-19 numbers, although the overall totals of positive cases and testing may change when the state’s technical glitch is updated.
PHD reports 58 new COVID-19 cases on Friday and an additional death bringing the county’s death toll to 69. The latest death was over 70 years of age with underlying health conditions and was a resident of Santa Maria.
The total case count is 6,704 with 198 active cases. There are currently 84 hospitalizations including 29 in the intensive care unit (ICU).
More information on data can be found here.
The reported test for the past few days have been around 500/day, which is 1/3 of what they were in the past month. Is this a result of the “glitch”? One thing it’s doing is driving down the 14-day average of new positives per 100,000 people, a metric we need (less than 100) to get off the state’s monitoring. However, the other metric of % of positives is now above 8%, which keeps you on the monitoring list. It’s a tug of war between these two numbers, and I hope this glitch isn’t the result of someone trying to manipulate the data, one way or another.
Chemical SuperFreak great info and yes makes you wonder about # manipulation OR the Covid Executives within PHD NOT being on top of the info given to them or emailed by the data entry level.
Hi GRAMMASB: I’ve been following all the published data on a daily basis and analyzing it myself. I’ve been quite vocal about problems I’ve detected in the numbers for some time. Some things are just so obvious it’s like getting slapped in the face. Daily totals of new cases don’t add up in columns on the PHD website. No increase in deaths for a couple of weeks, while the number of people in the hospital, ICUs, and on ventilators goes up with many of those facing a terrible outcome yet none seem to die? Other issues require a deeper look into the data, which I’ve done. The complexities of that analysis are beyond the scope of discussion here, but they’ve caught my attention and made me concerned. We’ve seen reversal after reversal from the local and state level, to the national level, by so called health experts on things like masks. Way, way back, here on Edhat in February and March, when toilet paper and masks were impossible to find, I and others pointed out that masks alone were not good enough. Several of us pointed out that you need to protect your eyes, as they are entry points for droplets. Only now, in the last week, some 5 or 6 months later Dr. Fauci is saying we should protect our eyes. I fully understand why doubters have so much ammunition to question the decisions that politicians and health care advisors make. It’s a tragic failure on so many levels.
Too late state. You’re fired.
LIES… government can’t even wipe their own a$$.
I am now at the point I do not trust what the gov. Says. Looking at the data from around the country and other countries, I feel this may be misleading. But it not like the Gov. has never lied to us before. Who would ever think that?
If we can’t trust the people whose job it is to accurately enter these numbers into “the system” … and are now being told to go back to entering “manually” …… then can we be expected to trust the Oh SO Important national voting system which is coming up in November ???
Maybe not wipe but they sure can cover . lol
Wow..more deletes than posts, not a good sign, but here we go!
Who ya gonna trust these days, as for Game Theory, Nash equilibrium is our only option. John Nash was the guy they made the movie “A beautiful Mind” about!
I recommend an hour BBC documentary, by Adam Curtis, The series is called “The Trap” and the episode is titled ” F…. you buddy” it will change your life forever!!
In God we Trust?
Since Public Health doesn’t actually give us any kind of qualitative info, I’m guessing it’s a combination of the state testing data being under reported plus the fact that they have been telling us for at least a month to only get a test if you feel symptoms. That would explain why positivity rate has gone up, with cases going down. Can’t really tell by hospitalizations either, b/c it seems like it’s stayed consistent mostly b/c people kicked the bucket. We are missing the asymptomatic people with this strategy though, so it kind of defeats the point of knowing community spread rates. And with Isla Vista starting to increase and students coming back (with no plan from Public Health on how to handle this), I don’t see a real bending of a curve any time soon personally.
Question Authority
Fully agree CSF.
Sagepup – just like that liar pretending to run our country.
N O !
LETMEGO – We’re in the Goleta Union district. The superintendent emailed the sample schedule with 2 zoom session – 45 minute morning and 30 minute afternoon. I asked my sister, a teacher in SB, and she said that is the minimum. I’m appalled that 1.25 hours is even the minimum. Elementary aged kids need far more than 1.25 hours of supervised learning with their teacher.
Even without the correction we are on the watch list.
We just learned that school aged children of GUSD teachers will receive onsite childcare provided by the district. So teachers can’t be exposed to our kids and must teach remotely. But their own kids will be at school, in groups of up to 40 students per school, managed in person by a district employee (not credentialed), while they watch zoom meetings of their teacher at home or down the hall. Meanwhile, one local GUSD school had over 100 students drop out to be home schooled or switched to a Charter. That’s over 30% of that school.
2:51 -Why would the teachers need childcare for only 1.25 hours of work? Ugh this is atrocious! I’d LOVE to do home school for my kids, but my wife and I both work from home now so that is pretty much impossible. It’s just flabbergasting that the districts had the entire summer break to come up with a plan and they apparently blew it!
GUSD must teach from their classrooms unless they get an exemption to teach remotely. If they teach from the classroom they’ll put their children into the on site day care. If they teach from home, they must also detail exactly how their kids are being supervised during school hours. In other words, under neither circumstance can a GUSD teacher manage his/her own kids while simultaneously zoom teaching. But why OK for teachers to send their kids to school when ours can’t?
please tell us all how you would do it better? yet you are at home, so you could home school your kids( it is NOT impossible ). Teachers are teaching YOUR children. something parents should also be more than willing to do themselves if need be. So far as parents and part of our own children’s schooling, WE blew it. this thread proves it. People are more concerned about daycare then teaching, more concerned about their time then safety, and yes I even homeschooled my 3rd grade daughter over the summer to make sure she was up to speed, its WHAT PARENTS DO.
Really, to you a voting system that has been used for centuries is suspect, just like a recently developed software program put together in a rush? Remember Trump’s voting investigation and how it didn’t find anything? Not for lack of trying. If this is the kind of logic that people are using, then I fear for our Republic.
Will this affect the numbers they rely on to determine if it’s safe to go back to school? Right now, our primary focus should be on how to get the kids in front of a live teacher again. With only 1.25 hours of required zoom “teaching,” this whole remote learning will be devastating.
one, we need to take care of the pandemic before it destroys our society. two, the teachers are just as at risk as anyone else. three, “1.25hr” is NOT whats going to happen. I just had our 3rd grade teacher meeting friday, and we are 6+ hours a day. this remote learning will be less “devastating” than all our teachers getting covid. This remote learning will be the best option we have to do this safely. We need to go back to school safely, and stop saying Kids are some how “ok to go out in it”. But other than that, the numbers are numbers, this isnt going to magically change one day to the next if we can go back to school. WE NEED TO SQUASH THIS VIRUS. not sit at the door waiting to be let into school. wear the mask, social distance, and do your part! then we can ALL get back to whatever normal will be.
not surprising, people are pointing the finger at whoever they can. and at some point workers are only human. and just say enough is enough, and quit. sadly we will see alot of this in the medical field and elsewhere with the amount of “ignoring” science” and “questioning numbers” we do.