Coronavirus reported cases/deaths pattern (why fewer on weekends?)

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JT Smith
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Maybe this is a dumb question, but why are there fewer reported Covid-19 cases and deaths on weekends?
 

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Can you post a link to the data you are looking at? I don't necessarily see that trend on my EMS Dashboard for Santa Clara County in Northern California...

https://www.sccgov.org/sites/covid19/Pages/dashboard.aspx

California COVID-19 dashboard showing 2391 total cases, 15 new cases, 134 total deaths, 2 new deaths and 84 currently hospitalized, with charts of cumulative and new cases by specimen collection date from March to May 2020.
 
I noticed it too. One thought is that during the weekend there are fewer administrative staff members to process patient info so it all piles up and takes several days for them to work through it and send it to the registry.

EDIT: Hospitals usually only have essential patient care, security, or housekeeping personnel on weekends. Regular outpatient services are closed. Non patient care departments like human resources, engineering/maintenance and especially the patient record department are closed or only on call so some things are put off until Monday.
 
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berkeman said:
Can you post a link to the data you are looking at? I don't necessarily see that trend on my EMS Dashboard for Santa Clara County in Northern California...

It's certainly more difficult to discern that pattern in the graph you posted.

I can see it in the world daily totals posted below as well U.S. daily totals.

Bar chart titled Daily New Cases, showing novel coronavirus cases per day from Jan 22 to mid May on a y-axis up to 125k; counts stay near zero until mid-March, then rise to roughly 75k to 100k by late April and May. Source: Worldometer.

https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/worldwide-graphs/#daily-cases

Bar chart titled Daily Deaths, showing novel coronavirus daily deaths per day from late January to mid-May, rising from near zero in February to peaks above 8k in April, with a source credit to worldometers.info.

https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/worldwide-graphs/#daily-deathsBar chart with a 7-day rolling average line of daily reported cases from March 1 to May 15; y-axis 0 to 2,000+, last value labeled 1,491, with the header 'At least 86,651 have been reported since Feb. 29.'
(from washingtonpost.com)
 
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gleem said:
I noticed it too. One thought is that during the weekend there are fewer administrative staff members to process patient info so it all piles up and takes several days for them to work through it and send it to the registry.

EDIT: Hospitals usually only have essential patient care, security, or housekeeping personnel on weekends. Regular outpatient services are closed. Non patient care departments like human resources, engineering/maintenance and especially the patient record department are closed or only on call so some things are put off until Monday.

That makes sense. Thanks.

EDIT: Although if it were up to me I'd tag the incidents with the date of occurrence instead of the date the data were entered.
 
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