OCCHD Wants To Gather Their Own COVID-19 Data

The Oklahoma City-County Health Department says it wants to begin collecting COVID-19 data directly from health care providers.

The decisions comes after the state department of health said those numbers have been wrong over the past couple of days.

Last week, Oklahoma was seeing 600 all the way up to over 1000 cases a day. The OSDH said a "technical data entry issue" caused inaccurate case numbers. The positive numbers Sunday, July 19 and Monday, July 20 dropped all the way to 100 and 200 range.

News 9 has reached out to the state overnight to see what these issues will mean for test numbers the rest of the week. 

Tuesday has typically been the day the state sees big numbers. News 9 asked state officials if we could see the biggest day for positive tests yet.

The OKC County Health Department said in a release this data is important because it impacts people's everyday life. They rely on it for contact tracing, and the OCCHD eventually wants to get their county's numbers directly from health care providers.

Their vote gave the green light to see what's needed to make that happen, including potential costs or policy changes.

The board says this is a "necessary step" to make future improvements and respond quickly to situations like COVID-19.