Santa Clara County published inaccurate demographic data on its COVID-19 vaccination panel and only updated the errors after the San José Spotlight caught the attention of officials.
“There is a discrepancy in the data,” confirmed Santa Clara County spokesman Roger Ross on Thursday. “We are investigating this.”
Most of the data on the county’s vaccination panel is accurate, including the total COVID-19 case count, but a data analysis shows that some of the numbers of those who got the vaccines were wrong by thousands to hundreds of thousands.
“I spoke to the county leadership and TI is working on it,” supervisor Otto Lee told San José Spotlight before the update. “It looks like a data breach … and it’s not intentional.”
Lee also added that the county did not use the incorrect data when making its decisions. Authorities were unable to explain the source of these errors on Thursday.
Some of the numbers published on the county panel were drastically different from the numbers from the county’s own data source.
On March 3, the county reported that 313,447 eligible residents had received at least one dose of the COVID-19 vaccine. Municipality data, available to the public on its data portal, show that more than 182,000 female residents and 131,000 male residents have been vaccinated. But on the panel, those numbers were 382,790 and 293,598, respectively. This totals more than 676,388 vaccinated residents.
The discrepancy continued in the data divided by race and ethnicity in the county panel. For example, the graph inaccurately showed that 236,994 eligible Asian residents and 274,652 eligible white residents had received at least one dose of vaccine. The panel now shows that these numbers are at 116,769 and 117,170.
The county, responding to requests from supervisors Cindy Chavez and Otto Lee, began to release COVID-19 vaccination data by demographics in early February.
The new data sets have also been added to the county’s daily tracker. The data shed light on disparities in the distribution of vaccination between different areas and racial groups in the county, where the most affected communities were receiving the vaccines at the lowest rates.
“This data is the reason why we were able to open vaccination clinics in the most affected communities,” said Lee. “The important thing is to make sure that people are getting the vaccines.”
Santa Clara County has opened 20 vaccination posts across the area, with more to come. He recently switched to the red level with less restrictive rules that allow indoor meals to be reopened again.
Supervisors Cindy Chavez, Susan Ellenberg and Joe Simitian did not answer questions for comment on Thursday.
Contact Tran Nguyen at [email protected] or follow @nguyenntrann on twitter.