County apologizes for wrong hospital numbers

Yamhill County Health and Human Services Director Lindsey Manfrin apologized this week for an error that, for several days, indicated extremely high hospitalization rates for county COVID-19 patients.

Information that around 20% of COVID hospitalizations statewide were Yamhill County residents was shared on Facebook by Commissioner Casey Kulla last week and reported in Tuesday’s News-Register.

Manfrin followed up Wednesday evening, saying there was currently no one hospitalized with COVID-19 who resides in Yamhill County. Thursday, however, the county listed three people as hospitalized.

“Yamhill County Public Health discovered that when pulling this data there were a number of people who were discharged from the hospital and this information was not accounted for due to the data system being used. The only way for us to accurately pull this data is manually,” Manfrin wrote in an e-mail to the News-Register.

 “This was a stand alone data error and all other data including OHA hospitalization data, case counts, cases per 100,000 and positivity rates are accurate,” Manfrin said. 

The county reported three new deaths from COVID-19 on Wednesday, and one on Thursday.

There have now been 69 deaths from COVID-19 in the county.

According to the Oregon Health Authority: 

* An 80-year-old man in Yamhill County tested positive on Dec. 29 and died on Feb. 19 at his residence. He had underlying conditions.

* An 85-year-old woman in Yamhill County tested positive on Dec. 29 and died on Feb. 17 at her residence. She had underlying conditions.

* An 88-year-old man in Yamhill County tested positive on Jan. 24 and died on Feb. 14 at his residence. He  had underlying conditions.

The death reported on Thursday was also someone 80 or older, but the details had not been released by press time.

Three cases were reported Tuesday in the county and six on Wednesday and Thursday, bringing the total to 3,801 cases.

Statewide, the Oregon Health Authority reported that cases, hospitalizations and deaths increased in the week of Feb. 22 to 28. A 17% increase in new cases over the previous week was reported. Testing had also increased, after a dropoff the OHA attributed to an ice storm that shut down power to much of the Willamette Valley for several days.

The percentage of people testing positive also increased, it said, and more people were hospitalized; 164 compared to 159 the previous week.

Deaths rose to 57 from 17 the previous week, it said but were “otherwise the lowest since the week of November 9–15.”

The OHA announced that Oregon has now vaccinated a million people. The OHA said that, as of March 3, the county had vaccinated 14,808 people, with at least one dose, of its total 108,061 population.