Trending
Oops, they did it again.
The Ohio Department of Health admitted "manual reporting errors at two laboratories" resulted in the undercount of 7,699 COVID-19 cases in the state between March 7 and Dec. 3.
"The backlog includes both new cases and updated information for cases that were previously recorded," Alicia Shoults, an ODH spokeswoman, said Tuesday. "The files are being processed and will be assigned the appropriate illness onset date."
As the backlogged cases are processed, they're being added to the daily COVID-19 count for the state for Tuesday, today and Thursday, Shoults said.
Of the 9,922 COVID-19 cases reported Tuesday, 1,725 of them were part of the backlog, according to the ODH website.
The 9,922 cases reported Tuesday is the most for a single day since Dec. 17, 2020, with 11,412. Without the 1,725 cases from the backlog, the 8,197 reported for Tuesday would be the most since last Thursday with 8,500. The daily average of COVID-19 cases in Ohio for the past 21 days is 6,837.
A significant error with reporting COVID-19 deaths was discovered in February.
Shoults said that was ODH's Electronic Death Registration System while the recent underreporting of cases came from the Ohio Disease Reporting System.
"Following an error in electronic lab reporting, there were two laboratories that were to follow manual reporting procedures while the error was corrected," Shoults said. "It was recently discovered that during that period, there was a lapse in the manual reporting, resulting in the backlog that will be reflected over the next couple of days."
The issue has been resolved, she said.
The ODH admitted Feb. 10 that it failed to report more than 1 in every 4 COVID-19 deaths in the state at the time that was discovered during a routine employee training.
The ODH had a single person manually handle the COVID-19 data by comparing death certificate information to a database used by doctors and health departments.
That person -- Karthik Kondapally, an epidemiology investigator -- got overwhelmed by the number of COVID-19 deaths and couldn't keep up, according to the ODH.
When the backlog was corrected, 4,275 COVID-19 deaths were added to the total. Those deaths had occurred in October, November and December 2020.
Kondapally resigned and Sietske de Fijter, chief of the department's Bureau of Infectious Diseases, was reassigned to a different job.
The ODH has experienced other COVID-19 reporting problems, including incomplete case data in fall 2020. Its website also has had numerous issues causing delays in reporting COVID-19 data, including Monday.