Santa Barbara County Public Health miscounted 28 coronavirus deaths. How did it happen?

SANTA BARBARA, Calif. -- More than 60 people in Santa Barbara County have died due to the coronavirus. On Friday, Santa Barbara County Public Health added 28 people to the list, who were previously not counted due to a reporting error.

County Public Health director Dr. Van Do-Reynoso said, "Because of the transition from one system to another, we lost count of the death certificates that were coming through." She added the error happened at the state level.

Those 28 deaths nearly doubled Santa Barbara County's death total from the coronavirus. 16 of those deaths were in Santa Maria, while the other 12 were spread throughout the county.

The error occurred between June 22 and July 27. During that time Santa Barbara County reported 3,390 new cases of COVID-19 and had only counted 5 of the 33 people who died.

Do-Reynoso said her team talked with the state’s team and decided that Santa Barbara County will go back to counting COVID-related deaths themselves. She added there were a couple of other counties in the state that experienced a similar problem.

Despite the miscount, Do-Reynoso said that even if we had an accurate count of those who had died, it wouldn’t have changed our reopening plans.

“What is open, what is not open," said Do-Reynoso. "Any of the reopening metrics, really, is state-driven and is based on case count, testing numbers, positivity rate, hospital capacity, including hospitalizations, ICU capacity and available ventilators.”

Do-Reynoso said the error was discovered Wednesday when they checked the county's death certificates. And now they are going back to that method to prevent a future miscount.

NewsChannel 3 has reached out to both the Governor's office and the State Department of Health's office. We are waiting for their response.