Clark County residents visited restaurants, hotels and medical facilities more frequently before being diagnosed with COVID-19, according to new data released on Wednesday.
For the first time during the coronavirus pandemic, the Southern Nevada Health District has voluntarily posted a list of the most common “possible exposure sites” on its website.
The data does not show where a person is known to have contracted COVID-19. Rather, it represents where an infected person traveled in the 14 days before becoming symptomatic or getting tested.
SNHD health officer Dr. Fermin Leguen said the data is being published due to media and public demand.
“It’s a way to really save time,” he said.
The data lists broad categories of businesses, rather than individual locations. An undefined “other” category topped the list with more than 23,000 possible exhibitions. Last year, state health officials said the category represents companies that do not align with other listed categories.
Then came “food establishments” with more than 13,000 possible exhibitions, “hotel / motel” with more than 12,000 and “medical facilities” with around 12,000.
Other top categories include “work”, grocery stores, casinos and schools.
Exposure site data is based on voluntary self-reports from people who tested positive during the disease investigation or contact tracking process.
The health district website states that data on some categories were not collected until mid-October, and that some places visited by infected people fall into several categories. The website does not inform the extension of the data extension.
Wednesday’s launch marks only the second time that possible data from exhibition sites has been published in Nevada.
State officials released data similar to the Review-Journal in September, as part of a public registration request.
At the time, the data showed that more than one in four Clark County residents recently infected with COVID-19 listed a hotel, motel or resort as a possible exhibition site. Strip hotel-casinos specifically outperformed the locations reported in June, July and August in southern Nevada, reports showed.
Before the reports were released, Governor Steve Sisolak said he was concerned that companies would be hurt by “incomplete information”. State health officials stopped publishing them soon after.
Leguen said the data has always been of limited value to the health district. He added that the agency’s environmental health division uses the data to help decide where to conduct inspections.
On Wednesday, assistant administrator for the Nevada Department of Health and Human Services, Julia Peek, said she was happy the health district was sharing the information.
“While useful in some context, it is certainly not a smoking weapon,” she said of the data. “So we need to look at this in combination with other things, but (we are) certainly happy that southern Nevada is publishing what it could be that would be useful to the public.”
Contact Michael Scott Davidson at [email protected] or 702-477-3861. Follow @davidsonlvrj on twitter.