Covid-19 data tells a story, and the state’s backlog is unlikely to change it.

A DATA BACKLOG THAT MIGHT NOT MATTER

Good afternoon.

Over the past few months, it’s become a habit for me to refresh the Monterey County Health Department’s Covid-19 data page at least daily. The numbers tell a story: They tell us who is getting Covid-19 (by age and ethnicity), where they live (by zip code) and what they do (occupation is listed). They tell us how many tests have been processed and how many new cases there are. 

Some of the storyline doesn’t change that much day to day. For weeks, there’s been a slow and steady creep upward in cases. But it’s hard to know exactly how many cases, because of a data glitch happening at the California Department of Public Health, leading to a backlog of 200,000 to 300,000 test results being reported. (That glitch led the director of the California Department of Public Health to resign yesterday.)

Last Friday, Monterey County Health Officer Edward Moreno and his staff noticed what looked like a reduced number of cases—which looked like it might’ve been good news—but it’s more likely a reflection of that data glitch. “We’re looking at at least 1,700 total tests that came in over the weekend, and that’s just a backlog and doesn't include new [tests],” Moreno told reporters this afternoon during a press briefing.

He says we should expect to see the case rate go up for the period of July 27-Aug. 7, a time period during which Monterey County’s case count increased by 26 percent based on the data that has already been reported. 

But any change is unlikely to be consequential. We’re already on the state’s monitoring list for counties that are exceeding a variety of thresholds. We already exceed an incidence of 200 cases per 100,000 population, a threshold set by the state to consider reopening schools in person, and we exceed it by a lot (Monterey County is now reporting 303.7 cases per 100,000—even with the data backlog). 

I asked Moreno today if we should expect any change to decision-making after the backlog is fixed. “I don’t think anything urgently,” he said. 

Perhaps the more troubling data comes in the latest report from the state on Monterey County’s Covid-19-related hospitalizations: There are now 49 patients hospitalized, a 17-percent increase over two weeks ago. Of those, 18 are in the ICU, an 80-percent increase from two weeks ago. (That’s down from 21 on Saturday, the highest since the pandemic began.)

It’s a reminder even as we rely on data that it’s still only part of the story: Each number represents a person, and many of their family members are awaiting life and death news. 

-Sara Rubin, editor, sara@mcweekly.com