Hundreds of positive COVID-19 test results have not been reported to Alaska’s health department in the past month, one of the few indicators of the tax data reporting system and showing only a share of recent cases on the daily case height released by the state. .
Public health workers periodically audit labs and clinics to understand the number of their cases and make sure the department does nothing wrong. Only recently did they discover that data from a particular lab was missing, state epidemiologist Dr. Luisa Castrodale said during a call with reporters on Friday.
Beachtree Labs, Anchorage’s new commercial lab, mixed in how it wanted to report the test to the state’s Department of Epidemiology, said Coleman Kittins, a clinical pharmacist who led the state’s testing efforts.
Patients and providers still get their results in a turnaround time of 24 to 48 hours, Kuchins said, “so this does not affect patient care.”
According to a recent update by the state health department, of the 1,6969 tests conducted in the last two weeks, most of which were conducted in the last two weeks, with 1,636 positive results. As of Wednesday, the lab had not reported data for nearly a month. Those results include 357 cases of anchorage and 880 positive results in the Metanuska-Susitna borough.
Beyond reporting errors from a single laboratory, backlogs and slow speeds have taken over the entire Covid-19 data system. The understaffed department is a part of it, Castrodale said. The tall heights of the daily case are probably an undercount and instead it shows how many people the department has to enter new cases into the database.
Understaffing is not the only problem of the state health department. It is also statewide, in clinics and labs, Castrodale said.
“It’s fair to say the system is elongated,” he said.
Alaska is not alone when it comes to hiccups and recessions. The state’s chief medical officer, Dr N Zink, said during the call that every state in the nation was struggling with similar issues.
But even without exact numbers that show what is going on every day, Castrodale said they are “absolutely certain that there is constant acceleration.” In addition, case trends such as the one-week and two-week case averages can help give a clearer picture of the current situation.
When Beachtree Labs Anchorage is located, they collected samples from people in Kenai, Anchorage, Palmer and Wasila, public health informant Megan Tompkins said Friday. He said there are still about 900 positive results that could not appear in the state database due to the reporting interval.
“We’re really working through them every day as fast as we can to get to the top of the queue of all the cases that are in that queue,” Tompkins said.
T Friday McKinsey said there were a number of cases on Friday that included a large increase in cases within the Met-Sue, thanks to the backlog of cases being filed.
