Massive data discrepancies continue for the Oklahoma State Health Department
One of Oklahoma’s top doctors is concerned the Oklahoma State Health Department (OSDH) isn't meeting basic expectations throughout this pandemic, despite investing $30million in the nation's only Pandemic Response Center.
More specifically, Former Oklahoma State Medical Association President, Dr. George Monks is accusing the OSDH of continually failing to share critical COVID data with federal agencies.
"We invested $30million in the Oklahoma Pandemic Center for Innovation and Excellence, but we're not getting a lot of innovation and we're not getting a lot of excellence," he said, "There's a major malfunction of data sharing."
Put plainly, when it comes to testing for COVID variants of concern in Oklahoma, what the state’s claiming and what federal agencies are reporting doesn't add up.
"Labs across the world are strongly encouraged to enter that variant testing information in that system," said Dr. Monks.
According to Dr. Monks, GISAID and NCBI are some of the medical communities' most renowned data collectors. However, when FOX 25 checked Thursday morning, the OSDH hadn’t reported any omicron cases on GISAID, and on NCBI, only 4 out of 760 omicron cases came from the state. The rest were reported from outside laboratories.
When asked if there was any excuse for why the OSDH wasn't sharing stats with those databases, Dr. Monks replied, "I can't think of any reason why. Everyone else figures out how to do it. We need to do that here in Oklahoma. We've got to be better."
Meanwhile, a months-long data discrepancy also continues with the CDC. The state claims they’ve sequenced more than 14,859 total tests, but the CDC is showing just shy of 8,890 tests. A difference of nearly 6,000 tests. It's a difference that's made even worse due to the fact that the CDC’s number includes counts from federal, state, commercial, and academic testing centers. Meaning, the CDC's report should actually be much higher than what’s coming from the state.
"So that's a huge number and really reflects the fact that some of these tests that we haven't shared with the CDC are more than months old and really, that information should be uploaded in real-time. It's only helpful if we can get it in there quickly," said Dr. Monks.
For the eighth time over a four-month span, FOX 25 requested a one-on-one interview with the OSDH to address these concerns. However, Thursday, the health department once again declined.
Instead of answers for why these data discrepancies exist, the state replied with this simple statement:
We want to reiterate that the Oklahoma State Department of Health (OSDH) knows and shares the most up-to-date and accurate information on the current COVID-19 situation in the state with Oklahomans.
"I think that there's great potential there and I was excited to see the pandemic center open, but unfortunately, it's been a $30 million taxpayer disappointment," said Dr. Monks.
After putting pressure on the OSDH Thursday afternoon, FOX 25 checked the NCBI database again that evening. Hours after they sent us the statement above, we uncovered that the OSDH had added more than 600 omicron results to the system.
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