When it comes to publicly sharing local data regarding COVID-19 cases, the state Department of Public Health just took a giant step toward greater transparency.
Up until Wednesday, the DPH only reported positive case counts and deaths county by county. By that criteria, of Massachusetts’ 14 counties, Franklin County had by far the lowest number (excluding the off-shore counties of Dukes and Nantucket). For example, as of April 14, Franklin County had 160 confirmed cases. By contrast, neighboring Worcester County had 2,350. Which begged the question, should we feel safer in Franklin County?
That question gained greater clarity when the state announced it would release town-by-town data of confirmed COVID-19 cases, the exception being towns under 50,000 population that had fewer than five cases, in order to safeguard confidentiality. The result is greater uniformity of reporting.
In Franklin County, for example, Greenfield has been on the high end of the transparency scale, posting daily numbers of confirmed positive cases, COVID-19-related deaths, and people who have recovered from the disease — no names or addresses, just data. On the lower end of the transparency spectrum, Montague was not sharing with the public any information about COVID-19 cases, saying that even anonymous data affects the public’s perception of the risk, often for the worse.
Its rationale was that either the numbers would be higher than expected, causing panic, or lower than expected, causing a false sense of security. The state’s new policy negates this attitude of paternalism, which presumes people are not capable of interpreting the data for themselves. This is a good change for all of us.
The next step is for the state to require nursing homes and long-term care facilities to release the number of positive COVID-19 cases or deaths they’ve had and, so far, the state isn’t requiring them to do so.
As reported in this paper, the only city nursing facility releasing numbers is Charlene Manor Extended Care on Colrain Road, where five residents have tested positive for COVID-19. Spokeswoman Lisa Gaudet described their degree of illness and the steps being taken to care for them and protect staff members who are caring for them. Tellingly, Charlene Manor has been allowing a weekly dog walk around the facility, bringing a welcome touch of connectedness with the outside world.
Poet’s Seat Health Care Center, on the other hand, said, “We’re not obligated to release numbers to the public,” according to Michele Carney, who manages the facility, when asked how many of Poet’s Seat residents have tested positive for COVID-19. She also would not give any details about how residents who may have tested positive are separated from other residents, or answer questions about whether any staff have fallen ill or tested positive for COVID-19.
Similarly, repeated requests for information and questions of Buckley HealthCare Center have gone unanswered. Four residents had tested positive there by mid-March and another 13 by the end of the month. It is not clear whether there have been any more cases or whether anyone has died of the disease. But one recent obituary in this paper stated that the person had died as a result of the cornoavirus contracted while at Buckley Healthcare Center in Greenfield.
This policy deprives nursing home residents, their families and staff of information they need to know to assess their risk of being there. It also skews the perception of risk for Greenfield as a whole. Presumably, the state’s latest change in reporting policy folds COVID-19 cases and deaths from nursing homes into town- and citywide numbers.
The latest chart shows Greenfield with 94 confirmed cases, yielding a rate of 541 per 100,000 residents, which is on the upper end of the per-100,000 range. Does this mean that Greenfield is a hot spot? Or are many of those cases from the city’s three long-term-care facilities? We don’t know because the state does not tell us.
Out of 351 towns and cities in Massachusetts, Greenfield is in the top 25 in the number of COVID-19 cases per 100,000 population. That’s alarming, any way you parse it. But it would be helpful to know to what extent the city’s three long-term-care facilities are skewing those numbers.
The state has taken strides toward greater transparency in releasing the number of COVID-19 cases town by town. Now it’s time to expand that policy to include nursing homes and long-term-care facilities.