County Health Officer Louise Rogers told the supervisors that the county is meeting state hospitalization benchmarks related to reopening the economy “but with the numbers of transfers from the prison system that may be thrown off; we’ll be trying to account for that in our reporting.”
“One of my questions is how to do that,” she said. “It isn’t called out in the data and it can’t really be because they are all patients. We may need to do some separate accounting, but I’m not sure exactly how. But I understand the need.”
Journalists, epidemiologists and the public all follow the data dashboard closely.
San Mateo County’s dashboard mirrors reporting software used by most Bay Area counties and the state, the same data problem could appear in other places where hospitals are taking in patients from prisons.
San Francisco reports the number of currently hospitalized patients who have been transferred from another location on its dashboard, a practice that dates back to when the city provided care to people who fell ill with the virus on a cruise ship.
As of Wednesday, corrections officials have transferred 71 patients with COVID-19 from state prisons to hospitals for treatment, including 43 people from San Quentin.
Corrections officers monitor the incarcerated individuals who receive care at hospitals outside of the prison system.
Canepa said the county can play an important role in treating sick people from San Quentin’s outbreak.
“Everyone deserves care and everyone deserves to get better and get well,” he said. “It’s about compassion. It’s about care.”
