Orange County plans to change what it tells the public about COVID-19, emphasizing longer-term trends over daily or weekly case counts and trading local for state-generated numbers about vaccination rates, a politically charged data point that can be key to tracking where the disease is hitting hardest.
County health officials aren’t putting a timeline on when they’ll present a new version of their online COVID-19 dashboard, but they confirmed Friday, Oct. 27 that a shift is underway.
“Technically, we do and will still collect that data. But we’re trying to be mindful of limited resources and not duplicate effort,” said Dr. Regina Chinsio-Kwong, the chief medical and health officer with the Orange County Health Care Agency.
“We’re still trying to get out information that is important to the public.”
The two data points expected to go away or be de-emphasized – vaccination rates and COVID-related demographic data – are both political hotbuttons. During the first two years of the pandemic, county board meetings and other public gatherings were often marked by angry speeches from people venting about vaccine rules and who sometimes questioned the lethality of the coronavirus.
But Chinsio-Kwong and other county officials said Friday that any proposed changes aren’t being driven by pressure from the public or any elected officials.
“It’s not a political decision,” said County Executive Officer Frank Kim. “I honestly don’t know what data they’re going to put on there or not, but I can say I’ve received no direction from the board to include some data points and exclude others.”
The expected shift locally comes as other health agencies in Southern California have either adjusted their public information in similar ways or are considering doing so.
It also comes as the coronavirus has dropped into a sometimes-lethal-but-generally lower-level health threat, something public officials still describe as a pandemic (because…
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