The Philadelphia Department of Public Health announced an error in their vaccination data collection on Wednesday, March 9th. 53.6% of children ages five to eleven were previously stated to have received one dose of the COVID vaccine, but it turns out that only 34.2% have really started their vaccination.

26% of children ages five to eleven received second doses of the vaccine, according to the Wednesday admission. A little over 75% of Philadelphians 18 and older are vaccinated, which is less than the 82% originally reported by the PDPH. The news broke on the first day that the School District of Philadelphia lifted the mandatory mask mandate. 

City Health Commissioner Cheryl Bettigole and deputies knew about the error in the data as early as February 16 but decided not to address it since vaccination percentages are not a part of how the city determines masking guidelines. 

“From our perspective,” PDPH Communications Director James Garrow said, “the vaccine rates have nothing to do with our mandates because…we want the mandates to be predicated on what’s actually happening to the virus on the ground.”

The city hired a second epidemiology team to review their monthly data to help it correlate with their weekly checks. This new team will help overlook their information thoroughly so mistakes won’t occur again.