State delays releasing recent COVID-19 death data to LNP | Health

The Pennsylvania Department of Health is dragging its feet on releasing up-to-date, statewide COVID-19 death data by ZIP code despite reaching a court settlement with LNP | LancasterOnline conceding that aggregate data on the deaths falls under the state’s open records law.

Citing the need for a “legal review,” the department requested a 30-day extension to provide the most recent death figures in response to a Right-to-Know request LNP | LancasterOnline filed on September 14.

“The department is working to compile the information to fulfill the latest Right-to-Know request and provide that data,” said Barry Ciccocioppo, the communications director for the Department of Health.

The extension notice is the latest delay in a legal saga stretching back to last fall when the department denied LNP’s request for the COVID-19 death data for ZIP codes in Lancaster County.

The newspaper appealed the department’s denial to the state’s Office of Open Records (OOR), which acts as an initial arbiter of disputes over public records requests. The OOR sided with LNP | LancasterOnline and ordered the department to send the data to the newspaper.

The department appealed the OOR’s decision to the Commonwealth Court in December. Both sides in the case filed briefs to the court before reaching an agreement just under two weeks ago to provide LNP | LancasterOnline with the data it originally requested.

The Department of Health’s settlement with LNP | LancasterOnline followed an August ruling from the Commonwealth Court ordering the state to turn over aggregated data concerning patients participating in Pennsylvania’s medical marijuana program to Spotlight PA, a Harrisburg-based nonprofit newsroom.

After LNP | LancasterOnline received the data, which listed COVID-19 deaths in Lancaster County from the start of the pandemic to September 2021, a reporter filed a request to the department to provide the data for the entire state’s zip codes, and for it to be current as of when the request was filled.

“You are hereby notified that, because a legal review of the records potentially responsive to your request is required, the Department will require up to an additional 30 days … in which to provide a final response to your request,” an Open Records Officer with the department wrote to the reporter on Wednesday.

That initial response, according to the lawyer who represented LNP | LancasterOnline in the records case, is “playing games.”

“Now, clearly, the reporter’s request is for a different time period. But it is for the same data,” said Terry Mutchler, a public records lawyer and former first executive director of the Office of Open Records. “It’s a different version of holding records hostage.”

What the data says

In its effort to deny LNP | LancasterOnline’s request in 2021, the Department of Health cited the risk that COVID-19 death figures could be used to identify the people who had died if they were provided at a smaller geographic level.

LNP | LancasterOnline argued in its appeal to the OOR, and later in court, that because the death counts would be aggregated by zip code, they would not provide that capability.

In the data provided to LNP | LancasterOnline via the settlement, the state data provides death counts for all county ZIP codes except those where less than five people died of COVID-19, presumably due to the same privacy concerns the department initially cited.

Still, the ZIP code-level data released to the newspaper provides the most granular portrait of which sections of the county lost the most residents to COVID-19 over the first 18 months of the pandemic.

According to the data, the ZIP codes encompassing Lancaster city and its northern suburbs – including Manheim Township, Lititz and Ephrata, among others – lost the most residents to COVID-19 in the period covered. ZIP code 17602, which includes some of the city, West Lampeter and East Lampeter townships, lost 161 residents, the most in the county.

Adjusted for population, however, the data provides a notably different portrait of resident deaths. While Lancaster city and the northern suburbs still ranked among the county’s hardest-hit areas, two of Lancaster’s rural zip codes – 17578, which includes Reamstown and Schoeneck, and 17509, which includes Ninepoints – had the most COVID-19 deaths per 1,000 residents in the county.

A similar dataset to the one provided by the state was available on a website maintained by the Lancaster County government, but commissioners removed it in March. That site, using data from the county coroner’s office, displayed COVID-19 deaths by municipality based on where people had died, not where their homes were, meaning it included non-county residents who died in Lancaster and omitted county residents who died elsewhere.

“We felt that there was no reason to avoid transparency in providing that information,” said Stephen Diamantoni, the county coroner. “I think we’re very open with that information, that data without compromising privacy of individuals.”

LNP | LancasterOnline regularly contacts the coroner to receive updates on how many people in the county have died of the virus but does not independently track deaths by municipality. About 60 people in Lancaster have died of COVID-19 in the roughly six months since the county took down its dashboard in March, bringing the total number of deaths since the start of the pandemic to 1,711 as of Tuesday.