The California Department of Public Health has announced that they are experiencing technology issues with the electronic laboratory reporting system reporting in to the State’s disease surveillance database (CalREDIE). The CalREDIE database is used to manage COVID-19 data for the State of California. These issues, which are thought to have begun, around July 25th, may have resulted in lower than actual COVID-19 case numbers being reported statewide. To address the issue, CDPH has deployed a strike team of data experts to fix the problem and better understand the overall impact of the issues. Additionally, protocols have been put in place for laboratories in California to report positive cases directly to local public health departments to ensure ongoing case investigation and contact tracing activities.

It is important to note that these issues have had no impact diagnosis and treatment of patients as laboratories have still been able to report positive cases to healthcare providers. Similarly, hospitalization and death rates are not impacted as they are reported directly to the state through different data systems. The Imperial County Public Health Department is working closely with the State of California in order to better understand the impact on our local dashboard and to find alternative solutions for continuing to provide timely and accurate COVID-19 information locally.