By SHANNON HAUGLAND
Sentinel Staff Writer
Sitka’s COVID case rate went up substantially Wednesday, for a few reasons.
One is that 11 cases were added for the day to the dashboard.
And another reason is that the city adjusted its dashboard to include nonresidents as well as residents in the count after city staff found that the summary table recommended to the city didn’t include nonresidents.
It had been the intention of the city emergency operations center to include all positive tests – from nonresidents as well as residents – in the case count.
With the 11 cases from Wednesday added to Sitka’s dashboard – and the addition of nonresident cases to Sitka’s total – the case rate posted for the day goes to 316.79.
The alert level goes to “high” when Sitka is at a case rate of 100 and higher.
Sitka does not have a huge number of cumulative nonresident cases – with resident cases about 10 times the nonresident count – but the count of nonresidents will drive up the figures for “new cases” and the “case rate” statistic on the city website.
For example, the case rate for October 19 without nonresidents was 164.26; after the four nonresident cases from the past seven days were added in, the case rate for the day now says 199.46.
The case rate here is the number of resident and nonresident cases in the last seven days, adjusted for 100,000 population.
Melissa Henshaw, city public and government relations director, said the state had advised the city to use data from summary tables, which cover “all cases.” It turned out to be for resident cases only. She said a member of the public asked whether the nonresident cases might be missing.
“After going back to the summary table that was recommended the CBS use, we realized that the numbers that we were pulling did not include non-residents,” she said in an email to the Sentinel. For example, Henshaw said, the city found the figures from October 15 and 17 didn’t match the summary tables that the state recommended the city use in its dashboard.
“A state employee confirmed it appeared that the summary table we were obtaining our numbers from did not include nonresidents,” she said.
The information was immediately corrected, Henshaw said.
The updated dashboard now includes the four nonresident cases, in addition to the 23 resident cases, for the past seven days. The case rate of 316.79 is representative of the 27 cases, adjusted for a population of 100,000.
City IT staff updates the dashboard daily by checking state statistics from the Alaska Department of Health and Social Services and putting them manually into the city COVID webpage, said Grant Turner, IT director for the city.
The state updates its dashboards around noon and the city updates its page shortly after, in the afternoon on weekdays, Henshaw said.
The information the city is using is accessible from the Alaska Department of Health and Social Services website, under the link for Cases, Deaths and Hospitalizations. Visitors to the site can select resident/nonresident, onset date, report date, location, and timeframe for cases. Henshaw said the city’s dashboard will match the figures on “COVID-19 Cases by Day.”
Turner said he has updated the dashboard through August, and will continue updating the statistics as time allows.
Turner said he knows the dashboard is a popular website, with some 300 to 400 hits per day during the week. He said he’s happy to get this straightened out.
“We want to present the most accurate data, for everyone to see,” Turner added.
“We strive to provide the most accurate information that’s relayed from the state,” Henshaw said. “Going forward, we will be collecting information from the state’s COVID-19 cases dashboard under the tab of cases, deaths, and hospitalizations rather than the summary table.”
Craig Warren, incident commander for the Emergency Operations Center, said when he checks the dashboard, “it tells me what’s happened between three and five days ago. It’s important to remember, people who are symptomatic were infected three to five days ago.”
It also tells him that Sitka is far from being done with the virus.
“It’s going to be up and down and I don’t think we’ll be out for a while,” he said. “I’d really like people to remember to be vigilant. We’re getting back to doing things we weren’t doing a year ago. This is just a word of caution.”
