Georgia’s Public Health Agency Faces Eroding Trust After Data Issues

Gov. Brian Kemp said that people should be confident in the state’s coronavirus numbers.

Brynn Anderson / Associated Press

A few weeks ago, it was a bar chart on the Georgia Department of Public Health’s “COVID-19 Daily Status Report” web page that seemed to show confirmed COVID-19 cases going down in Georgia’s hardest-hit counties, but that had its days all out of order. 

Then a drop in cases last weekend that DPH later explained was because of a processing error. 

Earlier this week, the agency confirmed it was combining two different kinds of coronavirus tests in its total test count, a data choice that experts say gives a flawed sense of how well the state is doing at testing people for the virus.