LITTLE ROCK, Ark — On a day that saw one of its largest single-day increase in new positive COVID-19 test results, Arkansas' Deputy Chief Science Officer said the spike in the numbers is to be expected at this stage in the COVID-19 fight.
"It is always a challenge dealing with something that is so fast-moving as COVID-19," said Dr. Austin Porter, a public health scientist helping lead a team of data-crunchers who provide the info behind Gov. Asa Hutchinson's slides and graphs shown daily at his press briefings.
"I believe now everyone is getting a crash course in basic statistics," he said.
That crash course has shown just how confusing it can be to get a handle on the fast-moving numbers in a pandemic. Even his team at the Arkansas Department of Health is not immune.
The headline chart posted every day is the number of new cases.
As we crunched the numbers to put them in context, THV11 pointed Dr. Porter to a discrepancy in that chart. It seemed to indicate a whole lot more cases back in late March than actually got reported.
The bar graph indicates days of 90+ cases. Other charts and our calculations returned actual cases in the 40's.
Dr. Porter called it a glitch with the system that converts the numbers into graphics and said the ADH graph would be corrected to match ours.
But problems with old data is to be expected. So, too, are the upticks being seen in the latest data.
"We anticipate to see moments of uptick in our data as parts of the economy open up," Dr. Porter said. He is not alarmed by the current trendlines, and points to clusters of cases rather than widespread community transmission, but also isn't viewing them through rose-colored glasses.
"To me, when you pull out the clusters it shows more of a stabilization of the numbers," he said.
The governor seemed to reach the same conclusion Thursday when he stated Arkansas doesn't appear ready to enter Phase Two of reopening the economy.
While Dr. Porter monitors the upticks, he has his eye on two key stats—which are currently positive— amid all the noise of the numbers.
"You want to look at hospital admissions and [ventilator] use," he said. "Those types of metrics help to really gauge the extent of the disease."