Breakdown Between UVM and Department of Health Results in Unreported Positive Covid Cases
By Anika Turcotte
Today the Vermont Department of Health and the University of Vermont Medical Center announced that approximately 50 tests between November 22nd and November 29th were not submitted to the Department of Health.
This means that these results were not included in new test counts in the past weeks.
"It was an oversight on our part, for sure," said Dr. Patsy Kelso, the Vermont State Epidemiologist this afternoon. "We should've noticed it sooner but we didn't."
The error was due to IT issues, resulting from UVMs Cyber Attack two weeks ago. Computer systems were immobilized and once staff got systems running again, they did not notice that Covid positive case numbers were not being reported to the Department of Health.
"We are extremely sorry for this error," said Stephen Leffer, President and Chief Operating Officer of UVM Medical Center Thursday. "And any impact it had on any of our patients or our community."
The Department of Health did not notice the lack of results for several days, identifying the uncharacteristic lack of cases from UVMMC on Monday the 30th. They contacted UVM, which quickly identified the issue and delivered the missing information.
As a temporary solution, the medical center has been faxing information to the Department of Health until the original technology can be restored. Leffer did not provide an immediate time frame for this action.
The lapse in data should not necessarily be an issue with the spread of Covid, despite the fact that the unfiled test results came from around the state. This is because it is the role of health care providers to notify parties of their test results. The 50 positive community members were notified within days of the date they took their test and likely have been self quarantining accordingly.
The breakdown is this: since the Department of Health was not made aware of the status of these individuals they could not perform contact tracing.
"The teams are confident that they can handle that burden of cases," Patsy Kelso said Thursday. "That work begins today." The Department of Health has already initiated tracing the extent of spread and notifying close contacts.
Kelso estimates that the current Vermont Contact Tracing Team can handle roughly 300 new positive cases per day and will be increasing staff.
These numbers which the Department of Health has not been accounting for in daily increase totals will be slowly incorporated into the data for December 2nd, 3rd and 4th. 16 cases were lumped into last night's total and the remaining will be added into future counts as soon as they are verified by the Department of Health.