Reporting incorrect for COVID

Alexis Barker
NLJ News Editor
 
For a total of 24 hours, Weston County was pushed to the forefront of the COVID-19 pandemic when the Wyoming Department of Health reported 116 active confirmed cases of the disease on Jan. 12. On that day, Weston County went from being the last county in the state, as far as active cases per capita went, to being No. 1 in the state, with 122 active cases and 516 total confirmed cases.
The problem was, according to Weston County public health nurse Lori Bickford, these confirmed positives dated all the way back to November and were not active cases. Bickford reported that an issue between the Wyoming Department of Health and the Wyoming Honor Conservation Camp in Newcastle caused the mass result dump. 
“They should be removed from the active count by 3 p.m.,” Bickford said on the morning of Wednesday, Jan. 13, and they were. 
But this isn’t the first time Weston County residents, Weston County Health Services, or Weston County Public Health have dealt with issues related to the reporting and recording of COVID-19 cases. 
Last week’s News Letter Journal reported that there have been a total of nine confirmed cases of COVID-19 at the Weston County Manor, and one death of an elderly woman last month, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Wyoming Department of Health. Neither of these statistics is accurate, though, according to Angela Phillips, prevention nurse for the facility.
Phillips contacted the News Letter Journal after the news story appeared, questioning where we had gotten the numbers for last week’s COVID story. She said that the numbers reported for the facility were not accurate and that there have been fewer than the nine reported positive cases at the facility and that all of the confirmed cases date back to November. 
After providing Phillips with the newspaper’s documentation, Phillips said the paper was accurate in reporting the information it had been provided. According to Phillips, there have been issues between what is being reported publicly and what is actually happening on the ground. 
“We have policies we have to follow, but the information given out by the CDC and Department of Health isn’t always lining up with the real on-the-ground situation,” Phillips said. 
Almost a year into the pandemic, the reporting of cases and deaths across the state continues to be delayed, with Weston County not receiving its first confirmed death reported by the local public health officials until a month after the death occurred. 
“Deaths are delayed because they are only recorded when the death certificate is properly filed,” Bickford had said. “We will only report deaths that list COVID as a cause of death.” 
Other reporting issues experienced in Weston County, as previously reported by the News Letter Journal, have included a Weston County resident receiving a mislabeled positive result from the health department. The report belonged to a different individual in a different county.
Also, there has been one known instance of a false positive not being removed from the county’s total positive case count.