Clark County COVID metrics stay mostly flat in new weekly report

COVID-19 metrics held mostly flat in Nevada’s weekly report on Wednesday, with a delayed report of over 300 deaths clogging up most significant figures and affecting raw data totals.

The Southern Nevada Health District said it had performed a “comprehensive data review” which led to a report of 356 new deaths over the past week. Of that number, 306 were part of the backlogged report, the health district said in a statement.

That brought the cumulative total to 8,181. Meanwhile, the disconnect between the state Department of Health and Human Services and the health district continued with regard to total case count. The state said Clark County had a total of 497,357, while the health district had a total of 502,211 on Wednesday.

Health district spokeswoman Jennifer Sizemore said last week that the numbers will “likely never completely align,” due to a number of factors. The state is including reinfections, while the health district is not. Sizemore also said the state was receiving records via fax that were not being entered electronically to the health district.

“We are working closely with Southern Nevada Health District,” state biostatistician Kyra Morgan said Thursday. “My team is meeting with them regularly to make sure that we have the same methodology.”

The discrepancies are “statistically insignificant,” Morgan said, because the trends are similar on both dashboards. She added that state officials look at a variety of data points when determining trends, but said the 14-day moving average of daily new cases and hospitalizations were both important factors.

The 14-day moving average for daily new cases in the county increased slightly in the last week, hitting 91 from 87 last week. The two-week moving average of daily deaths held at one.

Hospitalizations in the county decreased, dropping from 129 last week to 111.

State and county health agencies often redistribute the daily data after it is reported to better reflect the date of death or onset of symptoms, which is why the moving-average trend lines frequently differ from daily reports and are considered better indicators of the direction of the outbreak.

Data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention showed Clark County remaining in the “low” transmission tier, with a case rate of 39.4 per 100,000 people. That was essentially the same from a week ago.

Meanwhile, the state reported an increase of 1,047 cases over the past week, bringing the cumulative total to 660,148. Death numbers were also thrown off by the significant increase from Clark County, but the total stood at 10,501, and the 14-day moving average of daily deaths held at one.

The 14-day moving average of daily new cases increased from 112 last week to 114. The number of people hospitalized with confirmed or suspected cases of COVID-19 in the state dropped by 37, to 126.

As of Wednesday, state data showed that 57.08 percent of Nevadans five and older were fully vaccinated, compared with 56.43 percent in Clark County.

Contact Jonah Dylan at jdylan@reviewjournal.com. Follow @TheJonahDylan on Twitter.