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Ohio’s daily COVID case numbers are wrong again

By: Jo Ingles | Statehouse News Bureau
Posted on: Tuesday, January 25, 2022

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COLUMBUS, Ohio (Statehouse News Bureau) — The state’s COVID dashboard shows fewer than 5,000 positive COVID cases in Ohio today. The Ohio Dept. of Health says those numbers are an undercount. But those numbers have been incorrect before.

The counts were also off after the holidays, in the days following Christmas and New Year’s celebrations, when the virus appeared to be causing record high case numbers. Ohio Department of Health director Dr. Bruce Vanderhoff said last week it’s hard to keep up with so many cases being reported but he said ODH had made changes to accommodate the rapid influx of high case counts.

“What we did was work very aggressively to augment those systems and do some rapid, both human and technological efforts, in new ways,” Vanderhoff said.

ODH says this time, invalid data was received because of an electronic lab processing error and no lab results had been processed since 5 p.m. Monday. Case counts have always been thought to be underreported anyway because many positive rapid home tests are not reported and counted in the totals.