The Santa Barbara County Public Health Department revealed 28 previously unreported COVID-19 deaths Friday afternoon.
The department, citing a data error on its end, said the new deaths were not reported from June 22 to July 27. There have now been 60 COVID-19 related deaths in Santa Barbara County.
The department’s error did not impact the normal notification process to families, according to Dr. Van Do-Reynoso, the county’s public health director.
“This delay in reporting happened because of a process error as we transitioned from a manual process for disease investigation to the state’s CalConnect platform for investigation and contact tracing,” Dr. Do-Reynoso said. “To rectify this going forward, we have established improved processes to ensure accurate COVID-19 death counts.”
Moving forward, the county will now report deaths directly from death certificates as they received them.
“As such, we anticipate that death reporting will likely be delayed for a few days due to processing time and, in situations where death is a coroner’s case, we may not have confirmation for several months,” Dr. Do-Reynoso said.
For more information, see Saturday’s News-Press.
