SACRAMENTO, Calif. — A top California health official says a technical glitch that caused a lag in collecting coronavirus test information has been fixed, but it could take up to 48 hours to get the data updated.
California's Health and Human Services Secretary Dr. Mark Ghaly said he became aware of the backlog on Monday, Aug. 3, and alerted the governor that up to 300,000 records might have been backlogged — but not all of them are coronavirus cases and some may be duplicates.
Ghaly says the problem began with a computer server outage in late July. County health officials say they’ve been flying blind, unable to conduct robust contact tracing or monitor health factors without timely information. Despite the lag in numbers, Ghaly said officials believe overall COVID-19 trends remain consistent.
"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," Ghaly said.
Sacramento County Public Health Officer Dr. Olivia Kasirye said she was made aware of the glitch the next day.
"We are very dependent on the data," Kasirye said.
Sacramento County, and other counties throughout the state, rely on that information to understand infection rates in their county and to contract trace.
“What we’re going to do is prioritize, especially the ones that are most recent where we can have the largest impact because for some of them, if it’s more than two weeks, it’s probably at that point not worth while making the contact, but definitely the ones that are more recent it will be worthwhile," Kasirye said.
The reporting glitch also halted the school waiver program in California counties. The waivers, which would allow some elementary schools to return to the classroom, are based on infection rates in counties. Without accurate and up-to-date data, county officials can't issue those waivers.
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