About 600,000 duplicate vaccination shots were cut Saturday from the Pennsylvania Department of Health’s COVID-19 vaccination statistic dashboard, writes Keith Mayer for the Reading Eagle.

The new figures “more accurately reflect the number of people who are partially and fully vaccinated.”

The cleanup involved about five percent of the state population.

For weeks, some county officials have been suggesting there were double-counting errors in the state reporting system.

“Over the past couple of months, DOH has dedicated 30 staff to continuously improve data integrity,” said Barry Ciccocioppo, the state health department’s communications director.

That included removing duplicated data from:

• Some software that did not include a unique patient identifier.
• Providers uploading duplicative data.
• People getting first and second doses from different providers.

The updated data still shows an upward trend that more Pennsylvanians are getting fully vaccinated, he said.

The bulk of the duplication seems to be in Allegheny, Montgomery, and Chester counties.

Each of those counties had vaccination statistics reduced by about 100,000.

In Chester County, more than 80 percent of the eligible population had been listed as having at least one dose. That has since been reduced to 68 percent.

Read more in the Reading Eagle about the change in state vaccination statistics.