State database outages over the weekend may cause a delay in this week’s local case counts

SAN LUIS OBISPO — As COVID-19 transmission surges in San Luis Obispo County, local health officials reported 887 new cases over the holiday weekend, including the remainder of last week’s backlog in cases.

However, CalREDIE, the State’s database, is currently experience outages, which means local numbers will not be reported for Sunday and Monday. It is unclear when the issue will be resolved.

“We use data to identify trends over 7 to 14 days, so daily data about the number of local cases is not necessarily vital, but we need accurate data each week to help us slow the spread,” said Dr. Penny Borenstein, County Health Officer. “At this time, issues outside of our control impact our ability to report all the new cases from this weekend. We are waiting for the State to correct the issues. Regardless, COVID-19 is still surging in SLO County and are working to keep up.”

Members of the public can expect to see another bump in cases in the coming days due to the State’s CalREDIE database issues over the weekend and early this week. Local public health officials will work rapidly to comb through the data to ensure accuracy as soon as the data becomes available, but this process may mean local data issues will not be resolved until the end of the week. This does not affect the number of reported cases requiring hospitalization or intensive care, nor does it affect the number of deaths reported locally, as that data is assessed separately.

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Despite this delay in data, cases continue to remain high, and over the weekend, our 14-day average case count set a new record of 185 cases per day. Today the County Public Health Department reported 48 hospitalized cases, with 13 of those cases in the ICU. During the month of December, the County reported that 44 local community members died of COVID-19, accounting for half of our total local deaths and 4,086 cases accounting for 40% of the total cases locally. Additionally, today an additional 6 deaths were reported bringing the total number of deaths to 88.

With the large spike in cases over the last few weeks, it is likely more people have been exposed to COVID-19. Help local contact tracers by isolating immediately if you test positive for COVID-19 after testing and for at least 10 days, or by quarantining immediately if you are exposed to a known case.

For more information, visit ReadySLO.org.