Oklahoma health officials defended on Friday the switch to weekly reporting of COVID-19 data but admitted they did not do a good job communicating the change.
The state health department is now updating its dashboard on Wednesdays with data covering the past Sunday through Saturday.
"Even that is extraordinarily responsive. That’s the most that we do for any other disease," said State Epidemiologist Dr. Jared Taylor.
Taylor said with new cases down to current rates, it was a tradeoff between the value in the data and the time it took for public health workers to post an estimated 3,000 data points a day. Taylor said weekly reporting still gives good information about COVID-19 spread in Oklahoma without giving people a chance to use daily fluctuations to rationalize avoiding mitigation measures.
"I really want to avoid a situation where anybody looks at something and says, 'Oh, OK, case counts are down. So, that means I don’t need to wear a mask, I don’t need to socially distance,'" Taylor said.,
Going back to daily reporting is on the table if conditions warrant, but Taylor explained it’s a lot different if a jump like a doubling of the seven-day average happens over two weeks or two months.
"And so, if I gave you a number and said, 'Oh, if we get to 1,000 cases a day' – well, again, how did we get there? That’s going to make an enormous impact on how you would interpret that information," Taylor said.
Taylor confirmed Tulsa Health Department Executive Director Dr. Bruce Dart's claim that THD was not aware of the change before it was made and chalked that up to "a lack of professional comportment," saying a standing phone call has been missed a few times in recent weeks.
