Keweenaw Report Your Source for Local News and Sports
It stuck out like a sore thumb on the February 11th COVID-19 update. Keweenaw County supposedly had registered eight new cases in half a week. Looking back at prior updates, the county was routinely between zero and four for the past month. Sometimes what looks suspicious is just that, as the most recent numbers removed four positives from the prior tally.
So what causes that kind of error? Western Upper Peninsula Health Department’s Kate Beer says it’s not likely a rash of false positives. Generally, the errors are clerical in nature.
Beer says the correctional facility is another common source of confusion concerning reporting.
The location issue is an interesting one. Sometimes the coding is off by just miles that happens to place a case in a neighboring county rather than the correct one. Say, Keweenaw instead of Houghton. At a prior job, I reported on a case registered to Kewaunee County, Wisconsin, just east of Green Bay, that was redesignated to its proper location in Upstate New York.
It’s a reminder that COVID-19 updates involve data in real time in a way that is not done for other diseases. You are getting the first draft, rather than the final draft. Traditionally, the Centers for Disease Control are still making revisions to the annual death toll from influenza, as an example, for at least 18 months after the calendar year has wrapped up. This past summer they were still analyzing 2018 numbers.
