California elementary waivers stalled due to faulty Covid-19 case data statewide

Data related to Covid-19 case rates are incomplete due to glitches in the transmission of test results from testing labs to the state’s database, California officials have announced.

As a result new infection and positive testing rates over the past several days may be artificially low. Because this data is used to determine which county’s are on the state’s “monitoring list,” the faulty data is impeding the ability of elementary schools to submit waiver applications to reopen in person.

Dr. Mark Ghaly, the state’s Health and Human Services secretary, mentioned the data problems during a virtual news briefing Tuesday. He told reporters that “discrepancies” in the CalREDIE system had been discovered in the past few days.  “We’re working hard and immediately to reach out to the labs that we work with to get accurate information in a manual process so that we can feed that to our county partners,” Ghaly said.

The state subsequently stopped adding and removing counties from its monitoring list, the Sacramento Bee reported late Wednesday. The monitoring list is used by the state to determine which businesses open and whether schools can resume in-person instruction. Counties on the list with fewer than 200 infections per 100,000 residents can apply for the waivers, which must be approved by county public health officials. But without accurate case data, school and county officials do not have a clear idea of how risky it may be to reopen.