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

The bulk of the duplication seemed to be in Montgomery, Chester, and Allegheny Counties.

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

The cleanup involved about 5 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 PA 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. “More than 60,000 additional Pennsylvanians are fully vaccinated, and it more accurately reflects the number of people who have received the first of a two-dose vaccine.”

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

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