Prairie State Wire

The Illinois Health Department is disputing reports that it is refusing to release COVID-19 deaths by race and other demographics by zip code level.

Melaney Arnold, public information officer for the Illinois Department of Public Health, told the Prairie State Wire that the state recently began offering information about deaths by zip code, which includes demographic breakdown such as race, on its website.

“It’s been in the past two days that we’ve implemented the demographic data,” she said. “We were one of the first states to put out any demographic data period.”

A visit to the department's website on April 13, however, failed to yield data on deaths by zip code. Where the data should have been all that was shared was "n/a." 

The site also failed to breakdown the COVID-19 data by age, race and gender at the county or zip code level. Instead, only cumulative demographic data was available for the entire state. 

Wirepoints Founder Mark Glennon took the state to task last week over its reporting of hospitalizations and resource availability information related to the COVID-19 outbreak in an April 6 article, alleging that publishing the number of new COVID-19 cases is not enough.

“Where exactly within Illinois is overload approaching,” said Glennon as previously reported. “Which states need the most help? To answer those questions, you need to look at hospitalization rates and trends, empty capacity, available ventilators and such.”

 Arnold said in an interview that the state collects demographic data from what is entered into the National Electronic Disease Surveillance system by hospitals and local health departments. 

"If any information is missing in their data, we follow up,” Arnold said. "The National Electronic Disease Surveillance System is the same system all states use."

According to the CDC website, the National Electronic Disease Surveillance System (NEDSS) helps states manage disease information and send notices.

Features include patient public health events information viewed from one central location; information about hepatitis, general communicable diseases, vaccine-preventable diseases, meningitis, tuberculosis including more than 140 others; notices of Electronic Laboratory Reports (ELR) automatically issued; information from healthcare providers, health information systems and other public health jurisdictions immediately received electronically; documentation of public health investigations that includes workflows and surveillance follow up; tracing of disease contact in patients; and case reporting to CDC not quite in real-time but automatic nonetheless.