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Adjustment to COVID data will add more than 1,000 deaths to state's count, which has lagged CDC's

U.S. Department of Defense

There’s an adjustment coming to Oklahoma’s COVID-19 data as the state health department finishes up a data reconciliation process that will be included in Monday’s report.

"And we estimate an increase of about 1,366 cases and 1,053 deaths. This was done as part of a typical, annual review process that all states must complete in accordance with CDC disease surveillance and reporting guidelines," said State Epidemiologist Jolianne Stone.

The CDC tracks and maintains annual statistics on a wide range of infectious diseases, from anthrax to Zika virus, and states must review their reported data for those illnesses as well.

The state health department has been publishing the CDC’s count of COVID-19 deaths, which is based on death certificates and was 10,826 as of Thursday, but it has also been carrying out its own death investigations. Stone said that involves comparing death certificates to national case definitions and other available data.

"And there were very, very few that there were some uncertainty, and at that point in time, after discussions with the physician — of course, we always defer to the physician, since they're the ones that are seeing the patient — it was an extremely small number throughout the entire process," Stone said.

The reconciled data will also be reflected in the next weekly epidemiology report, which will be published Wednesday.

Matt Trotter joined KWGS as a reporter in 2013. Before coming to Public Radio Tulsa, he was the investigative producer at KJRH. His freelance work has appeared in the Los Angeles Times and on MSNBC and CNN.
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