‘Broken’ COVID-19 tracking leaves California in the dark

The breakdown in California’s coronavirus test reporting system is disrupting pandemic response efforts across the state, leaving local officials in the dark about the spread of COVID-19 and blocking the ability of counties to get restrictions lifted until the the system is fixed.

State officials have not yet provided details on when fixes will be made to the electronic system, called CalREDIE, that reports coronavirus test results to the state’s disease registry system. California, as a result, lacks an accurate count of coronavirus infections, leading health officials to freeze the state’s watchlist, with no counties added or removed.

“CalREDIE has broken,” said Peter Beilenson, director of Sacramento County’s Department of Health Services. “The bottom line is we don’t know the real caseload . ... We don’t know if we are missing 250 cases (a day) or 50 cases,” he said of his local numbers. “We have no idea.”

The flawed picture has cast into serious doubt California’s pandemic outlook. On Wednesday, the state counted 5,300 new coronavirus cases, down from a peak of nearly 13,000 reported about two weeks ago. But the steep drop relies on the underreported data, and health officials remain unsure about the actual caseloads.

The system snafus come amid mixed signs about the state of the pandemic. While some hospitalization rates are down, the state’s death toll reached a grim milestone, topping 10,000 deaths. Orange County also reported its singleday highest COVID-19 death toll Thursday, adding 32 deaths for a total of 697. And White House coronavirus task force coordinator Dr. Deborah Birx on Wednesday singled out California’s Central Valley as a worrisome region.

The lack of reliable infection rate data has led many counties to add disclaimers on their public health websites saying the information is unreliable. The data is also not being published on the state’s county data monitoring website, according to the California Department of Public Health. The

state has not given a timetable for when the problem might be fixed.

The flawed data has not affected patient care or test results for individual patients, officials said.

Dr. Mark Ghaly, California Health and Human Services secretary, called the problem his department’s “top priority” and said a team of dozens had been working “around the clock” to make fixes.

“Having accurate data is critical for public confidence, contact tracing and hospital surge planning. We will not rest until this problem is resolved,” Ghaly said in a statement. “All Californians and local public health officials must have accurate data, and we pledge to share a full accounting of when these problems began and their magnitude as soon as we have a clear understanding — and the solutions to address them.”

The California Department of Public Health has directed all laboratories to report positive results directly to county health departments until the problem is resolved. Some county health departments

are resorting to counting the testing results by hand to get accurate totals.

Local public health officials and experts are expressing growing frustration with the state’s response. Beilenson said state officials had not clarified how extensive the underreporting was or whether the missing data came from a single lab or

multiple agencies. Some officials fear that weeks of data may be inaccurate.

UC San Francisco professor Dr. Peter Chin-Hong, an expert in infectious diseases, said the inaccurate numbers potentially could affect federal aid because case numbers are examined before help is awarded. Low numbers, he said, could mean fewer federal resources.