High covid-19 case counts appear to have moved from Sewickley Heights to Sewickley, Bell Acres

An ongoing issue in gathering covid-19 data in the Sewickley area is causing skewed and inaccurate numbers for several communities.

A swell of covid-19 cases in Sewickley Heights has decreased — but the cases appear to have been moved to neighboring communities because of an ongoing issue in gathering data from individuals tested at Heritage Valley Sewickley.

Aaron Aupperlee, a spokesman for the Allegheny County Health Department, said a recent increase in covid-19 cases in Sewickley and Bell Acres “appear to be linked to tests at Heritage Valley Sewickley” that do not include an address for the people tested.

“The Health Department continues to work on a solution for dealing with data that does not include an address for the person tested,” he said in an emailed statement.

The issue is causing skewed case counts in some communities. Initially, the issue caused Sewickley Heights — a community with about 800 residents — to appear to have more than 300 positive cases.

County officials said this was because some patients at the hospital who receive covid-19 testing have incomplete address information when a test sample is sent from the hospital to the lab.

When this happens, the computer program used at the county Health Department defaults to the geographic center of the testing site’s zip code, which, for 15143, happens to be in Sewickley Heights. The majority of the hospital is located in Sewickley Borough. A portion is located in Sewickley Heights, according to Allegheny County real estate records.

Periodically, the county will reallocate positive covid-19 cases to their accurate communities. This appears to have happened on Jan. 20, when 273 positive cases were removed from Sewickley Heights’ count through case investigation.

However, on Jan. 21, Bell Acres went from 54 cases to 247. In Sewickley, the cases went from 152 to 223. Current numbers can be found on the county’s online covid-19 map.

As of Feb. 4, Bell Acres’ cases had gone down to 56. Sewickley jumped to 433 — and 4,460 tests have been administered in the borough. The borough’s population is about 3,800.

Suzanne Sakson, a spokeswoman for Heritage Valley Sewickley, said covid-19 tests from the hospital’s drive-thru and ConvenientCare locations were handled by Quest Diagnostics until Jan. 19. She said prior to that date, only the internal rapid tests at the hospital were handled by its lab.

“Since Jan. 19, 2021, all covid-19 testing and reporting is now completed internally by Heritage Valley,” Sakson said in an emailed statement. “We enter all patient demographics for both positive and negative results. The data gets reported through the (state’s National Electronic Surveillance System) reporting system.”

She said questions regarding the reporting of data prior to Jan. 19, 2021, should be directed to Quest Diagnostics.

The state Department of Health continues to remind health providers of the importance of collecting demographic data — including information such as date of birth, phone number, address, race and ethnicity of people being tested for covid-19.

The department issued a statewide Health Alert Notice on Dec. 28 that said it continues to get “a large number of laboratory test results” that are missing data.

John Bunce, 71, of Leet is an MIT graduate and self-proclaimed “geeky engineer” who loves numbers and data.

“All the unallocated cases are in Sewickley now,” he said. “My guess is someone in (Allegheny County) said clean that up in Sewickley Heights and put them all in Sewickley.”

He has tracked covid-19 numbers daily for the Sewickley area since March. He first noticed Sewickley Heights’ inaccurate case counts and found out it was because of a data reporting issue. Once those cases were reallocated, however, he noticed the cases just moved over to Sewickley and Bell Acres.

Bunce said most people in the area are not too perturbed about the inconsistencies coming from Allegheny County.

“You kind of just shrug your shoulders and say the government is having a hard time getting it right,” he said.