State Health Leaders Disappointed With OSDH's Change Of COVID-19 Data Reporting

Last week, the Oklahoma State Department of Health announced the decision to move to weekly reporting for some COVID-19 data.

The president of the Oklahoma State Medical Association disagreed with the decision. He said in order to get an accurate picture of COVID-19 in the state, they need daily data. He said that not reporting it gives people a false sense of security.

“Oklahoma is the only state in the United States that has transitioned and gone to this sort of once a week reporting, and the unintended consequence of this is we can no longer get a snapshot of how things are going in Oklahoma on a county by county basis,” said Dr. George Monks, the president of the Oklahoma State Medical Association.

Monks said in some national maps, Oklahoma is whited out or all green for the risk level for COVID-19 in counties throughout the state. That is translated to less than one case per 100,000 residents, but Monks said that is not an accurate representation.

“We really need that daily information to track it accurately to see if there is going to be a bump,” Monks said. “So, maybe we can intervene and do contact tracing to minimize the spread. We are trying to buy more time to vaccinate more people in Oklahoma so we don’t have another surge.”

The health department said it was time to change things up.

“With cases, deaths and hospitalizations all trending downward, and vaccination continuing to trend upward, we believe now is a good time to switch to weekly reporting,” said Joli Stone, the department's deputy state epidemiologist. Monks does applaud the state on its vaccination efforts but said it would have been ideal to move to weekly reporting when we get closer to hitting herd immunity, which we aren’t quite at yet.

“Some epidemiologists say that with natural infection and vaccination, we may be around 50% herd immunity but we need to be about at 85%,” Monks said.