Throughout this pandemic, Pennsylvania officials have failed to ensure the wholesale collection of race and ethnicity data around COVID-19 testing, confirmed cases, and vaccine administration, Spotlight PA reports. 

That matters because the same data is used to inform potential life-and-death decisions on everything from where to site a clinic to where to send more testing and personnel. Without complete data, policymakers lacked a complete picture of where need was the greatest, all while Black Pennsylvanians faced exponentially higher COVID-19 risks with fewer resources.

“This is not only a public relations issue,” a consulting group wrote of Pennsylvania's COVID-19 data gaps, “it is a very real health equity issue.”

THE CONTEXT: The Pennsylvania Department of Health does require health-care providers to submit race and ethnicity data for people tested for COVID-19 and those vaccinated against it. But officials haven't issued any penalties or fines to providers that failed to do so, including Pennsylvania’s largest health system, the $23-billion UPMC, which openly admitted to breaking the rule despite boosting studies confirming its importance. 

And while collections of this data have improved over the course of the last year, a recent report from the department showed race data was unknown for around 39% of positive COVID-19 tests since the start of the pandemic. Vaccine reporting hasn't fared much better. 

“It’s incredibly important for us, pandemic or not, to make any decision data-driven,” Laura Luther, health equity supervisor at the Erie County Health Department, told Spotlight PA. 

FINANCIAL AID: Pennsylvania governments are set to receive about $13 billion total from the $1.9 trillion COVID-19 rescue package currently before Congress, per the Associated Press. Around $7.3 billion of that will go to Pennsylvania's deficit-strapped state government, while the other $5.7 billion will go to local governments, many under mounting financial pressure after a year of compounding economic impacts, Spotlight PA reported. The funding will also have fewer strings attached this time around, further rankling partisan critics who see the plan as bloated and imprecise.

'GREAT RISK': A COVID-19 vaccine partnership between the city of Philadelphia and a fledgling startup ended in scandal, but not before putting the city "at great risk" in the middle of a pandemic, an investigation by Philadelphia's Office of Inspector General has found. According to WHYY, the report confirms that Philadelphia's Department of Public Health ignored serious red flags before turning over thousands of vaccine doses and $194,000 to the embattled Philly Fighting COVID group.

FAIR SHARE: Leaders of four of Pennsylvania's most populous counties say they aren't receiving their fare share of vaccine doses from the state and aren't getting answers from the Wolf administration about why. Leaders from Bucks, Chester, Delaware, and Montgomery counties called a Sunday meeting on the subject with Acting Secretary of Health Alison Beam “frustrating,” The Inquirer reports. Wolf’s administration has acknowledged no such vaccine disparity. 

'CREDIBLE THREATS': Democratic state Rep. Brian Sims says he's received "several credible death threats" a year while in office and wears a bulletproof vest for protection. The first openly gay lawmaker in the state House, Sims joins state Rep. Malcolm Kenyatta — the first Black LGBTQ lawmaker in state House history — as a frequent target of threats and hate speech that's only expected to get worse with both men now seeking higher office, USA Today's State Capital Bureau reports.

GROWING FIELD: The field of contenders for the seat held by outgoing U.S. Sen Pat Toomey got a little bigger Monday. Republican Jeff Bartos, who ran for lieutenant governor with Scott Wagner, formally announced his candidacy, the Capital-Star reports.