Inconsistencies in state covid data cause confusion

Throughout the covid-19 pandemic, journalists, health officials and the public have been inundated with data counting infections, deaths, hospitalizations and more. Often the figures come from multiple sources, including databases maintained by state and local agencies — and often, those numbers do not match.

“It’s expected that during the middle of an infectious disease emergency, there’s going to be some discrepancies,” said Dr. Amesh Adalja, a Pittsburgh-based infectious disease and public health expert.

In health departments without the most sophisticated computer or tracking systems, struggling to make sense of data despite reporting delays and lags, some oddities are “par for the course,” Adalja said.

This is especially true when most counties in Pennsylvania are operating without their own health departments, and those that do are struggling with inadequate resources — often understaffed and underfunded.

“It underscores the need to be really proactive in funding public health,” Adalja said, “so that this type of thing happens less frequently.”

Still, many of the errors in state covid-19 data lead to confusion and — when misinterpreted — misinformation. A Spotlight PA investigation in June found numerous issues with reporting lags and “data dumps” with hospitalization and death counts. Numbers were posted online with little context, making it increasingly difficult to understand the trajectory of the pandemic in Pennsylvania.

Months later, many of the same issues persist.

County case totals reported in Department of Health news releases often don’t match pages with the same information on the department’s website. In the past, DOH officials have said this is caused by new cases being reported after the news release has been run — and as of Friday, the department has stopped including those figures in daily releases altogether.

Also leading to confusion are persistent disparities in local case totals and those reported at the state level — for both the general public and within unique populations such as long-term care facilities. State and local entities often show daily death counts that don’t match, as the result of using different databases.

One of those databases, the National Electronic Disease Surveillance System (NEDSS) is not open to the public — so when state reported data doesn’t match local tallies, there isn’t always a way to see why.

DOH officials say data collection throughout the pandemic has been a challenge because of the sheer volume of information.

“The department is reporting covid-19 data on a regular basis, daily except for on Sundays,” said spokesman Nate Wardle in a statement. “This level of health data reporting, and reporting of information, is unprecedented from a public health perspective. Even our flu data is only updated once a week. So, inherently, there are some challenges that come with that.”

The department also is relying on multiple data sources for information, Wardle said, which can lead to discrepancies, as well as missing information.

“Some of the data being reported as part of the pandemic is data being reported by other entities,” he said. “Deaths reported to the department may be reported by any death reporter, which includes medical professionals and coroners. Positive and negative case results are reported based on the laboratories reporting those results to the department. Ethnicity and racial data for cases is reliant on the person filling out the lab submission form including that information.”

“There are many parts, both within the department and at various levels of the health sphere, working as part of this pandemic to provide information,” he said.

Wardle did not answer questions about how data is evaluated before it is made public.

Though researchers say errors are typical in this stage, the data is still supposedly in use for pandemic restriction and reopening decisions. Since April, state officials have said reopening decisions would be data-driven. But seven months into the crisis, some lawmakers say there is little transparency about which data is being used — and how it can be trusted amid so many inconsistencies.

“I have no problem (with the state) posting incomplete data on the website, but then why not put a footnote on that page that says, ‘Hey, the reason these numbers changed is because — whatever that error was,’ ” state Rep. Valerie Gaydos said.

Gaydos, a Republican from the Sewickley area, has called for greater transparency in data collection and pandemic decision-making since early on in the pandemic. She and other members of the state House’s Health Committee repeatedly have scrutinized shutdown and reopening decisions that claim to be data-driven. She said requests for more information and clarifications in the data have gone unanswered and that some pandemic decisions don’t seem to be backed by data at all.

Her sentiment is not new: Throughout 2020, many counties in the state were reopened despite failing to meet the metrics earlier put forth by Gov. Tom Wolf.

Confusion exists on both sides of the aisle. Rep. Anita Astorino Kulik, D-Robinson, said her communities often are baffled by “blanketing” restrictions when the local numbers aren’t nearly as severe.

“I think we need to look at the data closer and make our decisions based on our communities and the counties, not statewide, for example,” she said.

For members of the public, health professionals and state officials recommend looking at data more broadly, focusing less on daily case and death counts.

“In general, the trends are what’s important,” Adalja said.