The state’s legislative auditor debunks the claims of duplicate COVID-19 cases that have led some to believe the coronavirus outbreak data is being presented in a manner to be more alarming than it is. Legislative Auditor Daryl Purpera says the parishes may be seeing data before it goes through the state’s processing.
“From their perspective, they were absolutely seeing duplicates and it did not look accurate to them. From LDH’s perspective, they do have a process to remove the duplicates before it goes up on their dashboard,” said Purpera.
Suspicion of inflated numbers was increased with a Facebook post from Red River Parish’s homeland security office claiming that state numbers were higher because of duplicates. Purpera says the investigation shows the numbers reported by the Louisiana Department of Health are not reflecting double-counted cases.
“When Red River goes and looks at their data and they compare it to the LDH data, they see their data is lower, but their could be 10 or 15 individuals that haven’t been assigned yet to their parish and that could happen within the next few days,” said Purpera.
LDH says there is a one to two percent margin of error with reporting, and Purpera says the department’s processes are producing the most accurate data.
“They have a process and it is their electronic process and a manual process to try to weed out those duplicates. It appeared to us that they were doing a pretty good job of that,” said Purpera.
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