KINGMAN – A reporting discrepancy in Mohave County’s COVID-19 cases was one of the issues discussed at the Mohave County Board of Supervisors’ special meeting on Monday, April 13.

“This discrepancy can be very confusing,” said Public Health Director Denise Burley. “It results from the Arizona Department of Health Services and Mohave County having different reporting schemes and timelines.”

The county receives information about new cases overnight, Burley explained. The information is brought up in the morning by the nursing staff. Then, the investigation begins. Public Health goes through an internal process before they report the case. For example, they make sure that the patient is notified before they notify the public, although names and other identifying information of patients are not released.

“We request lab results and review them,” Burley said. Then Byron Stewart, county director of Risk and Emergency Management, and the board of supervisors are notified, and the health department works with Roger Galloway, county communication director, to update the county website and send a press release to the media.

The county adds cases continuously, but has longer internal processes, Burley said. That is not the case with AZDHS, which reports cases once a day at 9 a.m. with the cut-off time of 5 p.m. the previous day. The state’s webpage draws from a database that includes information from hospitals, health care providers and commercial labs. It includes automatically all positive cases even if a patient was not yet notified.

“I would recommend to align and link our website to the AZDHS website so we have the same parameters,” Burley suggested. “They won’t be in real time, but it’s hard for us to report them in real time anyway.”

While supervisors struggle to explain to their constituents why the state and county websites show different numbers, Burley says her staff is getting busier and busier with activities more pressing than press releases.

“We are extremely busy,” she said. “It will be harder and harder.”

The board discussed issuing one press release daily with a daily total of COVID-19 cases, which would make the work of the county health department easier.

County Manager Mike Hendrix expressed his frustration that his suggestion to have one press release a day is not being implemented.

“Can we put our resources in a different area,” he asked. “Another thing I want you to look into is to move more towards state directives on shelter in place. I don’t see that at all in our press releases. I see brush your teeth, don’t shake hands, blah blah blah… That has been discussed also.”

“We need to continue to update as we get the cases,” chimed in Supervisor Buster Johnson of District 3, attending remotely.

Supervisor Hildy Angius of District 2, also attending remotely, strongly disagreed, saying multiple press releases are “psychologically bad.”

“I would really be in favor of just one press release,” she added.

Johnson said he is concerned with the local papers having their deadlines around 3 p.m. Sitting on cases until a particular time of day, for example 5 p.m., would not be right, he said.

“There are still many people in this county that don’t believe we are dealing with a pandemic,” Johnson said, and recommended keeping them continuously informed.

After a consideration, Angius moved with a motion to have two press releases a day, no matter what, and to let Galloway pick two times – in the morning and in the afternoon. “It would be easier for people to digest all that information this way,” she said. The motion died on the floor without a second.



Angius also pointed out that the numbers on the county’s website – the number of tests performed compared to the numbers of positive, negative and pending cases – don’t add up. Burley promised to follow up on that.