778 new COVID-19 cases in Macon? Officials are reviewing the data.
UPDATE: The North Central Health District released the following statement regarding Monday’s COVID-19 report:
“Navicent Health has been working to automate reporting of its COVID-19 lab test results to the Georgia Department of Public Health. Earlier today, the two systems connected and the DPH state record system received a large number of automatic reports from The Medical Center, Navicent Health.
“The connection caused around 21,000 electronic lab reports (ELR) to be added to the DPH system. These records include COVID-19 tests with collection dates conducted in mid-June. This data dump has caused some of the case numbers in our counties to be reported inaccurately. While a large amount of the records appear to be duplicates that had been previously reported and can be removed, there are still several new cases. DPH and North Central Health District are working with Navicent Health to review the data and hope to have the issue resolved soon.”
ORIGINAL: The Georgia health department reported a record-shattering 778 new COVID-19 cases in Bibb County in its 3 p.m. update Monday. But state health officials are working to confirm those numbers.
The department reported 5,302 coronavirus cases in Macon, up from 4,524 cumulative cases on Sunday. The previous single-day increase in reported cases was 136 in early July.
According to Michael Hokanson of the North Central Health District, which is part of the Georgia Department of Public Health, the spike in cases looks to be “data dump” from a healthcare provider that could take the state days or weeks to untangle.
“We have to review the new data to see if they are duplicates, negatives, truly new cases or a mix of everything,” he said. “This is going to take some time since a substantial number of records were dumped.”
The state reported 2,304 total new COVID-19 cases, and more than half of those were “backdated prior to the 14-day window of uncertainty. I’m not sure I have ever seen this amount of backdating before. It tells us that there was more disease circulating during our July peak than we previously realized,” writes Dr. Amber Schmidtke in her daily update. Schmidtke is a former assistant professor of microbiology at Mercer’s School of Medicine who specializes in medical microbiology and immunology.
DPH also reported that 697 people have been hospitalized due to COVID-19 in Bibb County and 98 people had died, up 13 since last Wednesday.
Houston County is the closest Middle Georgia county to Bibb in terms of cumulative COVID-19 cases, with 2,508. Laurens County reported 17 new coronavirus-related deaths since last Wednesday, up to 36.
A second wave
Macon hospitals have been dealing with a second wave of cases over the past several months. Monday, Coliseum’s Macon hospitals were treating 41 patients for COVID-19. Navicent Health does not release COVID-19 numbers.
On Aug. 3, the Georgia health department launched a statewide dashboard for hospitals to report their saturation/diversion status to EMS agencies. The diversion dashboard uses the National Emergency Department Overcrowding Scale (NEODOCS) to rate how busy hospitals are, and note whether those facilities are asking ambulance services to “divert” patients to other hospitals.
Currently, the Medical Center - Navicent Health is listed as “severe” on the NEODOCS scale, with diversion for ICU/CCU, the ER, NICU and other services. Coliseum Medical Center is listed as “busy,” with psych diversion, and Coliseum Northside is listed as “normal,” with ICU/CCU diversion.
For a complete county-by-county list and additional data, visit the Georgia Department of Public Health’s website. The health department is not reporting how many Georgians have recovered.
This story was originally published August 24, 2020 at 5:15 PM.