Nevada state website confuses coronavirus picture

CARSON CITY — Before three new Nevada cases of COVID-19 were announced Wednesday in Clark County, a state update on testing and tracking of the coronavirus-caused disease gave a confusing accounting on the number of current active cases in the state.

The state data, said to be current as of Tuesday afternoon but not actually posted on a state website until Wednesday morning, showed four presumptive positive cases in the state and one case confirmed by national health authorities.

That was seemingly at odds with the total number of cases disclosed by local health authorities in Clark and Washoe counties prior to Wednesday’s news conference. The counties had reported four cases, one of which had been additionally confirmed.

State health officials and public information officers have not responded to requests for clarification. But with the latest announcement of new cases Wednesday from the Southern Nevada Health District, the matter might be moot. Five cases have now been reported in Clark County and two in Washoe County, for a total of seven statewide. The CDC has confirmed two Nevada cases — one in Clark County and one in Washoe County.

The state site, which for now is being updated only once a week, shows 168 Nevadans have been found negative for the coronavirus since testing began. Another 164 people are currently being monitored for possible infection, and 341 have completed monitoring without developing symptoms or “were determined to have no risk,” according to the state website and an advisory issued by the Department of Health and Human Services Wednesday.

The first group with positive and negative test results are so-called people under investigation, who exhibit possible COVID-19 symptoms and “may have been exposed through close contact with a confirmed case, travel to an affected region, or who may have severe respiratory illness requiring hospitalization where no more likely diagnosis and no source of exposure has been identified.”

The latter groups are people under public health supervision, including travelers from an affected region who have been referred or have self-referred to local health districts for monitoring, or people who may have had close contact with a traveler.

The lag in state reporting is problematic: Local health official have provided regular updates on actual cases for their jurisdictions but refer reporters to the state for data on the total number of people tested and being monitored in the state.

Contact Bill Dentzer at bdentzer@reviewjournal.com or 775-461-0661. Follow @DentzerNews on Twitter.