DES MOINES, Iowa — As more testing comes online in Iowa, daily coronavirus case totals in some counties are decreasing instead of staying the same or rising.
State officials said that happens when they revise case data after further investigating a positive result.
Every day, Sara Willette spends a few hours updating a massive document she's compiled of daily COVID-19 data in Iowa.
In the document, you'll find a ton of information: case breakdowns by county, long-term care facility outbreak information, graphs tracking state, regional and county trends and more.
"I want as many Iowans as humanly possible to know what they're doing with regard to the pandemic," Willette said. "To keep not just themselves safe, because we are all people and we think about our own safety first, but their families, their streets or communities, the whole state."
Willette is a data science intern at Iowa State University.
Since she started tracking the cases, Willette has noticed at times, case totals in some counties will shrink from day-to-day.
For example, Tuesday (May 5), the state reported 98 positive cases in Allamakee County. Monday (May 4), the state reported 99 cases.
On May 1, the state reported one positive case in Decatur County. On May 2, the state reported 0 cases there.
Amy McCoy, a policy advisor at the Iowa Department of Public Health that handles COVID-19 media relations, said that will happen.
"Cases can get reassigned upon further investigation," McCoy said in an email to Local 5. "Cases are reported based on county of residence, so if we need to do more follow up, especially following large testing events, these numbers may shift as the county of residence is confirmed and assigned appropriately."
Even so, Willette said she's concerned about the rate deletions are happening.
"It could be just really bad record-keeping, but it could also be deliberately hiding cases, which I feel bad thinking that might be the thing, but there have been so many removals," Willette said. "At this point, it's hard to understand how so many removals could occur. If what IDPH is doing is to purposefully get as much information out there, it just doesn't add up for me."
Initially, the state reported daily case totals by county in their daily press release.
When positive cases were removed from county case totals, the action would be noted in the release.
For example, at the bottom of a release from the governor's office dated April 5, there was a note saying: NOTE: A case that was previously reported as a positive case in Pottawattamie County, upon further investigation, is a negative case and is removed from the case count.
The state no longer releases information in that way.