The COVID Data Tracker of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention listed California in the yellow tier Monday night until the morning of the next day.
The said level means the state is at a “moderate” spread of COVID-19 disease.
But the moderate classification did not stay for long as California returned to the orange tier indicating “substantial” spread Tuesday afternoon. In the same period, California was joined by Connecticut, Hawaii, Florida and Louisiana in the orange tier. The majority of states nationwide are on “high” transmission, coded red in the levels, indicating that they recorded over 100 fresh cases per 100, 000 last week.
The COVID situation in each county is reported by the CDC through its tracker, which uses recent data of the pandemic. According to reports, the map released on Monday cannot be trusted as the state frequently has delays in submitting weekend records.
“CDPH is aware of this data issue associated with the CDC COVID Data Tracker and has been working closely with CDC to correct it,” according to the California Department of Public Health’s statement to SFGATE. “For part of Mondays and Tuesdays for the last several weeks, CDC has shown California as being in the “yellow/moderate transmission” category and then has switched to show California as in the “orange/substantial transmission” category later on Tuesday. This problem appears to be linked to California’s 5 day/week reporting cadence. CDC has notified CDPH that they will be implementing a change in their system to accommodate the CDPH reporting cadence.”
Furthermore, the tracker also categorizes counties in 50 states and usually, Bay Area counties are recorded on lower community transmission as compared to the counties from other states.
These Bay Area counties are listed on the orange tier on Tuesday: Contra Costa, Napa, San Francisco, Santa Clara, Solano, and Sonoma.
Meanwhile, these were classified under the yellow tier: Alameda, Marin, and San Mateo.
