Data issues are hampering California’s COVID-19 vaccine distribution efforts | National

“We’ve pointed out that their data are bad since the end of December,” said Ernest Mendes, supervisor of Fresno County.

After being asked to publish more information about the county’s progress in vaccination efforts, the state released a dashboard that “makes vaccine data transparent and accessible to all Californians.” did.

However, the dashboard was full of errors, including displaying a small number of doses from counties in Arizona and other states, so Kat DeBurgh, Executive Director of the California Health Officers Association, was first removed to the state. He said he told me to do it. Officials in a small county in California also reported that the dashboard significantly underreported their doses.

“It was very inaccurate when it first came up, but (the dashboard) now looks much better,” said De Burgh.

According to Darrell Ng, a spokesman for the California Public Health Service, the overall accuracy of the state’s vaccine data has improved, helping California raise the national ranking of doses, but efforts are often manual. It was a painstaking and slow process.

And no work is done. Aimee Sisson, a public health officer in Yolo County, told lawmakers at a hearing Wednesday that an upload error caused state databases to underestimate nearly 30% of vaccines given in the county.

“Neither the number received nor the controlled number reported by the state matches what we know to be true in Yolo County,” Sisson said. “Yolo County staff have worked with state contractors to troubleshoot discrepancies, but they didn’t help.”

A California warning provider warned that if vaccines weren’t given fast enough, the state could regain doses, stressing that state-dependent data need to be accurate.

“If the state uses current data to determine future allocations, Yolo County may be punished for what the state considers to be 51% control, but in reality 74%. It’s a control rate, “says Sisson.

Data issues, according to Sisson, made the county generally appear to be taking longer to deliver doses, prompting the state to look for new ways to speed up administration. Newsam said the state will sign a contract with the Blue Shield of California to review vaccine allocation methods and improve data collection. The deal will be released this week.

Some county officials have expressed concern about rebuilding the state’s vaccine delivery system, saying the problem is not in how doses are distributed, but in state data collection.

“The system isn’t broken,” Sisson said. “I think it’s because the dose being administered hasn’t appeared.”

Part of the problem with state data is the large number of vaccine providers who enter information using different types of software. According to some county officials, errors and delays may be the result of the software itself. According to county officials, dose information has been uploaded to the state’s vaccination registry, but the total may not be updated.

“I’ve heard from multiple local health departments in the Sacramento region that they’re experiencing the same problem of lack of dose (in the state registry),” Sisson said in a hearing. “The same thing is happening here in Los Angeles,” added Dr. Paul Simon, Chief Scientific Officer of the Los Angeles County Public Health Service.

A legislative body in Urban County, California, said in a letter to Newsom this month that its member counties were “significantly challenged by the lack of accurate data at the state level.”

Newsom advertised last month how much the state is increasing daily vaccinations, saying, “A few days of data delays … are killing us on some of the countries.” Stated.

When Newsom told Californians to “responsible” for the goal of giving one million doses of COVID-19 vaccine in 10 days, California’s critical vaccine data collection problem first became apparent. I did. After that deadline, state officials said coding errors and data delays made it difficult for Newsum to say whether he had achieved his goal.

The state’s pandemic response prompted secondary speculation about the measures taken to stop the coronavirus epidemic, including the August discovery that numbers became unreliable due to a failure in public health computer databases. It has been hampered in other ways by poor quality and outdated data systems.

In the face of criticism from county officials over the issue of persistent vaccine data, Dr. Thomas Aragon, director of the California Public Health Service and state public health officer, “believed” in “purification” at a hearing Wednesday. I’m so focused that I can’t, “he told lawmakers. Data, quality improvement. “

“We need to improve our data,” Aragon said.

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