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Cole County Health Department explains reasoning behind separately reporting long-term care facility deaths

JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. (KMIZ)

The Cole County Health Department changed the way it reports COVID-19 data in the county.

As of Friday, it now separates long-term care facility data.

The change came with six new reported deaths at long-term care facilities in the county. Before Friday, the county had only logged two total deaths.

COVID-19 data reported on the Cole County Health Departments website as of September 1st

Communicable Disease Coordinator Chezney Schulte said those 6 deaths were directly related to the outbreak at long-term care facilities in the county. She said the deaths were reported as COVID-19 related deaths from the state shortly before they were released.

"We heard from the long term-care facility of the positive cases and were doing the investigation into the positive cases, then we had also heard from the director there about the hospitalizations or how their cases were doing, and then were updated with those deaths," Schulte said. "At that time, that is not information we receive or report on though, and so we don't release that information because that wasn't a report from the state."

When the department received the data of the 6 deaths from the state last week, Schulte said it was reported on their website.

"There can be a delay in that reporting of when that person actually passed away versus when we put it on our website," Schulte said. "Just based on making sure COVID-19 was a diagnosis at death, making sure that person had tested positive, and making sure that notification had come from the state."

"There can be some lag-time, I suppose, in the reporting, but it's not like they were being held onto or we had to decipher much, it's just waiting for that process to take place," she said.

Cole County's reasoning behind reporting long-term care facility data separately is to show those outbreaks are not part of the community at-large, but confined within a facility.

"Not necessarily that we wanted to separate the deaths at all, but just separating the total cases and saying it came from that long-term care facility opposed to a community setting or any other risk to areas," Schulte said.

Boone County does not separate long-term care facility data from it's general data. Assistant Director Scott Clardy said that's because they have not had a large issue or outbreak with a long-term care facility.

He said several other counties across the state and country have started reporting the same split data to explain the spikes long-term care facilities can cause in cases and deaths are not out in the general population.

Clardy said data about deaths, along with hospitalizations and ventilator use, show the severity of the virus in the area.

"In Boone County, we are seeing cases predominantly in young people and they don't tend to be severe," Clardy said. " That doesn't always hold true, in this country we have had young people die, but in general it much harder for people to recover as they age."

For Cole county, the death toll is something that is important to track, Schulte said it's not something to harp on because it is real people's lives.

"We're trying to keep the community updated, we want to keep people informed, but we also have to understand, these are people behind the numbers, these are lives behind the numbers," Schulte said.

ABC 17 News has reached out to the State Health Department about its reporting policies, but did not receive an immediate response.

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Connor Hirsch

Connor Hirsch reports for the weekday night shows, as well as Sunday nights.

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