The coronavirus rate in Winneshiek County is probably higher than is being indicated

The Associated Press is reporting that an error on Iowa's coronavirus website has had the effect of lowering the number of new confirmed cases.

The report says an Iowa City nurse practitioner, Dana Jones, uncovered the problem and alerted state officials, who are working to fix the data error.  Basically, some people who tested negative earlier in the year were retested later in the year and tested positive.  But instead of coding these results as being new cases in August, the results were coded by the date of the original testing--in March, April, May or June.

decorahnews.com has studied the number of coronavirus cases the Iowa Department of Public Health is currently reporting for those earlier months and comparing them with news stories we posted at the time which announced the numbers released then by the IPDH.  We discovered the state website now says there were 30 coronavirus cases in Winneshiek County as of June 22nd, even though the IDPH on June 22nd reported 24 coronavirus cases--in other words, six new cases which should have been assigned to August have now instead been assigned to an earlier month.

That would mean instead of there being 33 coronavirus cases so far this month, the number should be 39.  That's a number that's higher than the combined totals from March 15th all the way through July 6th--or one more coronavirus case in the last 17 days than in the first 116 days of the coronavirus epidemic.