Suffolk County’s COVID-19 map will be taken off line “for a few days” beginning today, County Executive Steve Bellone announced yesterday.
The county will be transitioning to “a new system that is part of our contact tracing efforts in partnership with the state to do enhanced contact tracing,” Bellone said. “We’ll get that map back up as we move to the new system,” he said.
The county will continue to post data on its website every day, he said. It has been posting daily updates here.
When he made the announcement, Bellone did not address the ongoing discrepancy between the “total cases” number displayed on the county map and the total cases for Suffolk reported by the State Department of Health.
The county map has been reporting a “total cases” number significantly higher than the state numbers — sometimes by as much as more than 4,000 cases.
Bellone, during his daily media briefing, has always reported the state numbers. The “COVID-19 Case Update” posted by the county to its website have also been reporting the state numbers.
Asked by a reporter last week to explain the apparent discrepancy, Bellone said he was unaware of any discrepancy and would look into it.
On May 16, the county’s daily “COVID-19 Case Update” document began including a note stating “Map includes positive antibody cases.” However, the map number clearly did not include all positive antibody cases because the total number of positive antibody tests reported by the county was about three times the difference between the state-reported case number and the county map’s case number.
On Saturday, the county’s daily case update began including the following statement: “Note: Map includes some positive antibody cases. We are currently working on issues with the computer program that produces the map.”
The sum of the cases reported on the map for Suffolk’s 10 towns has been closer to the total cases reported by the state. The county map has been the only consistently available source of data for individual towns and hamlets in Suffolk. It is unknown if the county’s “COVID-19 Case Update” document will include data for towns and hamlets going forward.
The survival of local journalism depends on your support.
We are a small family-owned operation. You rely on us to stay informed, and we depend on you to make our work possible. Just a few dollars can help us continue to bring this important service to our community.
Support RiverheadLOCAL today.
