Oklahoma Overview
Data Reporting Assessment (Learn more about data quality assessments)
- Some issues exist for state-level metrics
- Some issues exist for race and ethnicity data
- Some issues exist for long-term-care data
When Oklahoma reports no data, several days of data, or unusual data (such as decreases in values that should increase), our volunteers note it here on the date the anomaly occurred. We also note here changes in our own methodology that affect the data.
On February 27, 2021, Oklahoma's Total PCR Tests dropped by 3,314 without explanation.
On February 11, 2021, Oklahoma announced via a press release that due to delayed reporting by facilities, and time taken to investigate previously deferred cases, the “majority” of new deaths reported on February 11, 2021 occurred in November, 2020.
On February 3, 2020, the Oklahoma Department of Health cautioned that the 52 deaths reported on this date occurred between January 4, 2021 and February 1, 2021, with 32 of them having occurred since January 27, 2021.
On January 10, 2021, Oklahoma noted that the rise in COVID-19 cases was in part due to a “decrease in testing and a less consistent reporting schedule over the holidays”. We urge caution when interpreting their data from this time period, and encourage the use of 7 and 14-day averages as more reliable figures than individual numbers.
On December 27, 2020, we cleared Oklahoma's Confirmed cases field from October 19 onward. On September 8, 2020, Oklahoma announced in a press release that it would transition to counting both confirmed and probable cases, instead of just confirmed cases. This change appears to have taken effect on October 19, 2020, when OK stopped calling its cases "confirmed positive cases" in press releases, as it had before, switching the wording to "cases."
On December 22, 2020, Oklahoma noted via a press release that there would be no update to their data on December 25, 2020 due to the Christmas holiday. Additionally, they noted that the data for December 26, 2020 would include only the data that would have been reported on December 25, 2020, and the data for December 27, 2020 would include data for both December 26, 2020 and December 27, 2020. As a result of their executive order reports being on a one day lag, we were able to report all metrics except for Confirmed cases, Cases (confirmed + probable), Ever hospitalized, Recovered, and Deaths (confirmed + probable) on December 25, 2020. We were only able to update Confirmed cases, Cases (confirmed + probable), Ever hospitalized, Recovered, and Deaths (confirmed + probable) on December 26, 2020. They also noted that this change in reporting schedule may cause some data to be “artificially inflated”, and as with all data from this period, we urge caution is using these figures.
On December 17, 2020, Oklahoma announced that due to technical issues on December 16, 2020, they were unable to update their testing data. As a result, we were unable to update Total PCR tests (specimens), Positive PCR tests (specimens), Negative PCR tests (specimens), or Negative PCR tests (people) on December 17, 2020.
As of December 16, 2020, Oklahoma’s Currently hospitalized and Currently in ICU include only patients with confirmed COVID-19. Prior to December 16, 2020, they included confirmed COVID-19 patients and people under investigation.
On December 4, 2020 Oklahoma announced that the increase of 4,287 cases reported today was largely attributable to an issue with the state's reporting system, which resulted in the inclusion of backlogged cases from December 2 to December 4.
On November 25, 2020, Oklahoma announced via a COVID-19 Situation update that there would be no update to their data on November 26, 2020 due to the Thanksgiving holiday. Because much of the data that we get for Oklahoma is sourced from their executive order reports, which are on a one day lag, we will only be able to partially update Oklahoma’s data for November 26, 2020 and November 27, 2020 as a result.
On July 19 and July 20, Oklahoma noted that reported Total cases numbers were inaccurately low due to technical issues.
Prior to April 10, 2020, Oklahoma reported "Positive (Out-of-State)" results. We excluded these figures from our data, as we assumed these individuals were isolated outside the state.