Collin County Commissioners Vote To Remove Some Data From Coronavirus Dashboard
McKINNEY, Texas (CBSDFW.COM) - It's been the center of debate in Collin County for months: Should the COVID-19 dashboard on the county's website stay or go?
At the Collin County Commissioners Court meeting Monday, Nov. 9, elected leaders voted 3-2 to revise it.
Going forward, it will only include the hospitalization data, which comes directly from the county, along with an explanation on why this decision was made.
There will also be a link to the state data for those who want to access it.
For months, there's been concerns over the data the dashboard includes.
A lot of the information comes from the Texas Department of State Health Services and the Collin County Commissioners Court said it has found inaccuracies.
"At any given time you could see cases rise dramatically," Commissioner Cheryl Williams said. "It has absolutely nothing to do with reality because those cases may have been a month ago and aren't really relative any longer."
Because of this, a disclaimer was put on the dashboard.
Then in mid-October, commissioners vote to remove it all together at the end of the month.
But two weeks later, Commissioner Susan Fletcher made a motion to keep it up because the court had planned to have an additional discussion on the issue before removal.
Commissioner Duncan Webb seconded the motion.
"I agree I would like for it to match up exactly, but I just personally struggle with not providing information to the public when we're a governmental entity that has a public health authority," Fletcher said.
"I don't think there's a clamoring for please give us bad data on any topic," Judge Chris Hill said. "I think the public has a certain expectation that we give them good data on anything that we speak on."
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