Our goal at The Argonaut is to provide reliable information to our community in a timely manner. We have kept updated pages documenting COVID-19 cases, deaths and demographics in English and Spanish and plan to keep doing so.
Since so much data is released about COVID-19 so often, we wanted to explain how we obtain these numbers.
County case and death numbers
We obtain the numbers of current COVID-19 cases, possible cases and deaths from the public health district websites. There are seven public health districts in Idaho, including Panhandle Health District (PHD), North Central Health District (NCHD), Southwest District Health (SDH), Central District Health (CDH), South Central Public Health (SCPH), Southeastern Idaho Public Health (SIPH) and Eastern Idaho Public Health (EIPH).
Latah county belongs to NCHD.
Most public health districts update their COVID-19 counts around 5 p.m. local time on weekdays. The state COVID-19 page updates at about 5 p.m. Monday through Saturday. Since the state page updates at about the same time the district pages update, it is possible for case counts for some counties to be different between the state and local pages.
Gov. Brad Little addressed these discrepancies at a press conference May 28.
“If we say at five o’clock, we’re going to release the numbers and somebody gets a test result at 4:59(p.m.), obviously (the counts) are going to be off one,” Little said.
The Argonaut updates around 6-7 p.m. daily to ensure our reporters have time to gather information from each of the health district websites and compile the data on a spreadsheet and our website.
Total case and death numbers
Since we gather our data from the public health district websites instead of the state page, our total cases and deaths numbers are different from the ones displayed on the state page. We calculate these numbers by adding the reported cases and deaths from each county, as reported on the public health district websites. We do not include possible cases or deaths in our total counts, the bold numbers on top of the cases pages. The state page includes these cases.
Demographics information
The data for how many individuals have been tested for, hospitalized for and recovered from COVID-19 is not reported on all public health district websites. This is true for cases among health care workers and cases by demographics as well. Therefore, we obtain our information on these details from the state COVID-19 page.
Dates for confirmed community spread and first cases
Each public health district writes press releases when a county it serves confirms its first case of COVID-19 or confirms community spread of COVID-19. These press releases are available on each districts’ website, which is how we obtain this information.
Graphics
We have experienced technical difficulties maintaining the graphics on our cases pages. We are working to address the problems now. These graphics, which include a map of Idaho and multiple graphs, visualize information about demographics, the locations of cases and the timeline of cases in each county. The graphs cover demographics information at the top of the cases pages and, under each county heading, when cases were confirmed in relation to the first confirmed case of COVID-19 in Idaho.
Do you have more questions about how we’re reporting on COVID-19? Send questions or coverage tips to [email protected] and we’ll get back to you with our answers.
Lex Miller can be reached at [email protected]