Health Officer Sepers Talks About The Discrepancy In Covid Case Numbers Reported By Appleton As Compared To Those Reported By DHS; Also Talks About Reporting Numbers As Covid Becomes Endemic

A reader asked why the weekly covid numbers the city of Appleton reports do not line up with the numbers being reported by the WI DHS. Overall, Appleton has reported a couple hundred more cases in Appleton than DHS has and 1 more death than DHS has.

I reached out to the health department and asked them why the numbers didn’t line up.

I had actually also reached out to them back in March of this year and asked them essentially the same question, only at that point Appleton was reporting fewer deaths and fewer cases than the DHS.

Both times, I was reassured by Health Officer Charles Sepers that the DHS data was accurate. In fact, Appleton and DHS pull their numbers from the same source but, apparently, use different methodology to parse it.

While he did not exactly explain the reason for the difference between the numbers reported by the Appleton Health Department and DHS, in his March email he broadly talks about the challenges of cumulative reporting. “Some of these include both underreporting or duplicate reporting of cumulative cases due to technical errors from private labs uploading data, private labs not complying with state and federal reporting standards and timelines, human error, etc. Because of these challenges, cumulative case counts reported by the State can rise and fall depending on these various challenges. Ongoing quality improvement processes help ensure the accuracy of these data over time.”

He also stated in his March email and reiterated in his September email, “For someone wanting to have accurate reflection of the historical data, the publicly available dataset reported at https://data.dhsgis.wi.gov/datasets/covid-19-historical-data-by-city-village-town-v2/explore is statistically similar for deaths and cumulative case counts reported by AHD.”

I asked him, if the DHS data was the most accurate information available, why was the Appleton Health Department reporting different numbers. What was the benefit of reporting different numbers if the discrepancy in numbers causes a decrease in trust that what is being presented is accurate?

He responded, “The fact of the matter is that when data are pulled and updated at different times, there will be discrepancies.”

He then briefly touched on reporting case counts during the next phase of Covid, saying, “We are rapidly approaching a point when displaying specific, local data, rather than refer people to state resource, is fast approaching. As we move into a more endemic state of the virus’s trajectory and the decrease in medically significant disease becomes more prevalent, focusing on communicating community risk becomes most important.”