State health officer apologizes for delay in COVID-19 data posting
A high-ranking state Department of Health official has apologized for a breakdown in posting state data about the number of confirmed cases of COVID-19 and deaths.
“First, I want to acknowledge that our reporting systems are delayed; I apologize for that,” Dr. Kathy Lofy, the state health officer and chief science officer, said at a press briefing Tuesday. “Our system was not originally designed to handle the large number of both positive and negative reports that it has been receiving. We’re working with our vendor on that and pursuing our options on that.”
The most recent data posted on the state Department of Health website Wednesday was as of 11:59 p.m. Saturday. In a written statement Tuesday, the state said “outside a pandemic, only positive [test] results would be reported” to its computerized system. But with the COVID-19 pandemic, the system also needs to track negative results and “this volume is overwhelming the tool.”
“We cannot provide an estimate for the next release of numbers, but are working diligently toward that goal,” according to the Department of Health.
Lofy said the delay in getting data “does not really impact our ability to make decisions because we generally look at data trends over a longer period of time than a few days. A lot of the data sources we use are highly imperfect so we need to look at a number of different sources together.”
The number of people with confirmed cases of COVID-19 reported per day increased sharply from about 200 to 250 patients per day from March 21-24 to around 550 to 600 patients per day from March 26-28.
“Most of that jump in case counts was due to a doubling in the number of people who were tested and that’s actually good news because testing capacity has been limited and to see an almost doubling in the number of people who are being tested is great,” she said.
Lofy said the data point that is more important to her is the proportion of tests that are positive for COVID-19 per day.
Throughout the middle of March, about 6 to 7 percent of all COVID-19 tests were positive per day. Over the past few days, it has been closer to 8 to 9 percent per day.
The number of deaths per day also gradually has increased, Lofy said.
Lofy said the state is compiling data on all people who have been hospitalized with laboratory-confirmed COVID-19. While that work continues, public health officials have examined some real-time data on people who have been hospitalized in Washington with symptoms that are consistent with COVID-19.
“I want to stress that these data have many limitations because we know that some patients with COVID-like illness may have another type of infection. People can come in with a fever and cough and have influenza but then they would be captured as having symptoms consistent with COVID-19.
“And then we also know that some patients with COVID-19 might not get captured if they’re not presenting with classic symptoms. We have not shared these data widely publicly because we are still trying to fully understand how accurate they are,” she said.
In looking at data from various sources, it suggests that COVID-19 still is increasing in Washington, but it doesn’t appear to be increasing at exponential rates, Lofy said.
“Without any mitigation strategies in place, we would expect the virus to spread exponentially. What we mean by that is for every person who is infected, 2 to 3 times as many new cases would be popping up every week. Since we are not seeing this exponential growth, we do believe that our social distancing measures are having some impact in slowing down the virus,” she said.
Lofy cited a recent data model by the University of Washington’s Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation that projected the peak of the COVID-19 outbreak at around April 19.
“This is the point when we might see the highest number of cases,” she said.
In response to a question, Lofy said the state doesn’t know if the peak also would be around April 19 for counties in the central Puget Sound area. She said the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation is trying to examine the trajectory in King and Pierce counties.
As of last Friday, there were 108 outbreaks of COVID-19 in long-term care facilities across the state including nursing homes.
Lofy said public health officials have noticed what they call very high “attack rates” in some of the facilities, with over 50 percent of the residents infected.
“When we have outbreaks of influenza in long-term care facilities, we generally see much lower attack rates and that’s because generally people have some immunity to the influenza strains that have been circulating or have been vaccinated this year. Those really high [COVID-19] attack rates highlight the fact that nobody has immunity and it’s really easy to spread within these facilities,” she said.
Also on Tuesday, Gov. Jay Inslee’s chief of staff, David Postman, said the state has made some large orders of personal protective equipment for health care workers, with help from loaned executives from Amazon and Microsoft.
“We’re getting both private supplies that we order directly for all of this equipment, as well as what we are able to get from the feds in the [Strategic National Stockpile],” Postman said.
In addition to ordering 950 ventilators this week from four private manufacturers to treat COVID-19 patients, the state has put in an order for a second round of 500 ventilators from the federal government.
“It’s unclear at this point how many we will get. We’re trying to clarify that. There is a national ventilator shortage. I don’t believe today there is a shortage of ventilators in Washington state in the hospitals and again, we have some in [state] stockpile,” Postman said.
This story was originally published April 1, 2020 at 5:30 AM.
