As the number of positive COVID-19 cases has grown at a higher rate in Guthrie County over the last couple weeks, the public health department seeks to clear up some confusion as to how and when this information is presented.

Both the state and Adair and Guthrie counties’ COVID-19 dashboards update daily with the number of positive tests, recoveries, and deaths, and sometimes the two websites’ figures vary. Guthrie County Public Health Director Jotham Arber says they are tracking the results from tests conducted in the county, but information on residents who’ve tested outside the county can sometimes lag from the state. When it comes to deaths, Arber says it can sometimes be a longer wait to get the official word from the Iowa Department of Public Health before they update their tracker, “So if a patient goes to the hospital with COVID-19 and they do end up dying then we wait to see what that report says before we make the changes on our site. So the state would definitely have a more accurate number as far as deaths go, because if they were to die in a hospital in Des Moines but they lived in Guthrie County that would be counted as a death from our county but we wouldn’t necessarily get it as quickly as the state would have access to that.”

Arber believes that residents can benefit from following both the county and state dashboards. He adds that the health department and emergency management agency are looking at possibly adding more features to their website this fall such as clarifying what cases are active versus those that have recovered.