I can’t see how that would be very important. As I understand (and I’m not a CIVIL engineer), the concrete road sections are non-structural; they’re only for supporting traffic. I think it is common to remove such sections both for simple resurfacing and more intensive repairs. I don’t think they could afford to do this kind of removal regularly if it were a structural piece. Besides, surely they would know that removing the concrete sections would weaken the whole structure if such were true, and wouldn’t do it. Or, even if it does, they would have to prepare the road/bridge to re-distribute forces before removing a section.
I’m not a civil engineer either, but there is one thing that may be of interest, with respect to the redecking that was in progress.
If jackhammering of the deck, for removal, was underway, the jackhammering could have provided the energy for initiating a catastrophic fracture of an already-existing corrosion-induced stress crack. If this was indeed the failure mechanism, it is likely that the jackhammering happened to hit a resonant frequency of a corrosion-weakened structural member.
Some of the early reports I heard seemed to indicate there was active jackhammering under way at the time of the bridge failure.
While there are multiple possible failure initiation modes, this is certainly one of them. Only time, and a really good failure analysis, will tell.