Louisiana made a significant data reporting change today in conjunction with a far stricter Stay In Place Order from our Governor, with closure of non-essential businesses and limitations on social gatherings and group interactions. Due to the continued enormous growth in public health workload, the State DOH will make updated COVID-19 reports once daily at 12 noon, instead of twice daily as has been the case for several days.
When public data reporting hinders public health work under resource limitations, this is the correct public spirited move. The State DOH deserves great credit for their transparency efforts, which continue to outshine anything Federal CDC is offering, and which are accomplished with a small fraction of personnel and logistics resources at the State’s command.
However, this change means that the data reporting framework for today is missing 8 daytime business hours, and the apparent trends are therefore altered from the previous several days. This will self-correct over the next several reporting periods, but no firm conclusions should be attempted while comparing the experiences of today and yesterday in Louisiana’s trial with COVID-19.
So, today’s tracking tables are provided using March 22 9 AM data, without further comment. Analysis will resume tomorrow with the new set of numbers reporting as of noon on March 23.
Here are the usual tables for inspection.
