COLUMBUS, Ohio — State Auditor Keith Faber wants to hear from of Ohioans about their experience with coronavirus testing, as part of a larger project through which he will review the accuracy of Ohio’s COVID-19 testing numbers.
After being “approached by several members of the public who shared their personal experience with COVID-19 testing,” Faber plans to set up an online portal to solicit additional stories at some point in the near future, according to Allie Dumski, a Faber spokeswoman.
UPDATE: Faber’s office launched the portal on Aug. 11, the day after this post published. Click here to visit.
The portal will be part of a larger project through which auditors from five states — Delaware, Florida, Mississippi, Ohio and Pennsylvania — plan to review their respective states’ COVID-19 data for uniformity and accuracy. Part the project’s goal is to create a uniform COVID-19 data reporting system, so that comparisons among states can be done accurately.
The governor’s office welcomes the review, said Dan Tierney, a spokesman for Gov. Mike DeWine.
“We’ve always been willing to talk with people about how our data processes work so they can have confidence in it,” Tierney said.
Faber and DeWine both are Republicans.
Part of Faber’s review will be to investigate a persistent rumor — it’s taken on different forms, and often is second-hand, but generally entails someone waiting for a COVID-19 test, leaving before it can be conducted and later being notified by mail that they’ve tested positive. State health officials have said they’re not aware of evidence of the issue being widespread or even documented at all.
Dumski said the auditor’s office “is in the process of gathering information and verifying it. The office is only interested in first-hand accounts to establish facts or debunk rumors.”
The rumor has been prevalent on social media. Tierney said the rumor has been repeated on local talk radio.
“We’d love to investigate it,” he said. “So if anybody has that information about where the test was taken, what the facility was, what the county was, so we can run it down, we’d be glad to do it. But nobody ever takes us up on that offer.”