'Churn of information' leads to discrepancy in active case numbers

As health officials contend with rising coronavirus cases throughout Montana, discrepancies have arisen in the numbers reported by localities and the state government.

On Oct. 19, officials with the Montana Department of Public Health and Human Services announced that there were 136 active cases in Lincoln County. The Lincoln County Health Department, however, reported only 68 that day.

Jon Ebelt, public information officer for the state agency, confirmed that the county’s numbers were correct. The error in the state’s count came from a lag in communication between the two departments. With cases cropping up across the state, health officials have had to devote more time to contract tracing, leaving less time to keep track of active case counts.

“Updating that number is not the highest priority,” Ebelt said.

Keeping track of active case counts on the local level is a multistep process. When a test for the coronavirus comes back positive, state officials report the result to the corresponding county health department, Ebelt said. Local health officials then have to determine if the person who received the positive test resides within county lines. After verifying the case and conducting contact tracing, county officials report their findings back to the state.

Ebelt said state health care workers might then have to perform their own verification before they can update the numbers. When local officials remove a patient from the list of active cases, it can cause a delay, leading to a situation where the numbers reported by the state are higher than those announced by the county.

“It’s just a constant churn of information,” Ebelt said. “There’s no downtime to this work in this public emergency.”

Other counties have seen discrepancies between state and local numbers. Ebelt listed Gallatin County as an example where the case counts on the county health department’s website does not always correspond with those published on the state’s online database. The Daily Inter Lake has reported Flathead County officials may be alerted to additional cases before the state health department. This lag has led to differences in Flathead County and state active case number counts.

Jennifer McCully, Lincoln County public health manager, said she expected the state and county reported numbers to converge as officials on both levels continue to collaborate.

Local health department officials reported 10 new cases of the virus on Oct. 21 bringing the active case count to 65. Three of the patients were under 19, two were in their 30s, one was in her 40s, one was in his 50s, one was in her 60s, one was in his 70s and one was in her 80s. Only three of the cases had contact with a known positive. All of the new patients were symptomatic. Health department officials reported one hospitalization that day.