July 12, 2020 — Croatia’s Civil Protection Directorate reported 50 new COVID-19 infections, but local authorities reported 85. Why the difference?
Croatia’s Civil Protection Headquarters announced today that 50 new cases of coronavirus have been recorded in Croatia in the past 24 hours. That is good news, a significant drop from the 140 cases reported on Saturday.
The figure conflicts with numbers provided by local authorities, which suggests there are actually 85 new infections around the country. The difference can be chalked up to several factors, according to Index. Namely: varying schedules.
The National Civil Protection Directorate’s schedule varies from local bodies. It collects data from 12:45 pm one day to 12:45 pm the next day.
“Differences in numbers between national and county headquarters occur for several reasons,” the directorate told Index. “The first is reporting at different times.”
The National Headquarters publishes data at 2 p.m. The data is read every day at 12.45 p.m. and collected up to that time.
If a headquarters has a publication of results before the National Headquarters, then their reading of data from the platform will not contain the data entered from the diagnostic site in the meantime, and the opposite is true if their publication is later.
Then their numbers will include the diagnosis done after reading at 12.45 p.m.
Regarding the distribution by counties, the report of the national headquarters is based on the automatic reading of the place of registered residence from the database with HZZO insured persons.
This database is filled from the Ministry of the Interior’s residence registration database, though many Croats live in one place and are registered in another.
As a public relations expert engaged in the Civil Protection Directorate explained back in April, the difference in numbers is also due to the lack of coordination in the publication of data. For example, if a county’s headquarters publishes data at 9 a.m., they refer to the last 24 hours in their area.
“There is an application that is filled in by local headquarters,” the source told Index. “The national headquarters announces at the conference at 2 p.m. what was finally entered in the application by 1 p.m.”
