Florida accuses CDC of inflating COVID numbers in apparent CDC mistake

In a move that reignited calls for Florida to resume daily COVID-19 reports, state health officials on Tuesday accused the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention of inflating the number of new coronavirus infections Florida tallied over the weekend.

The apparent mistake did nothing to change the Sunshine State’s status as the coronavirus hotspot of the nation, but the Florida Department of Health jumped on it.

“The daily case counts for Florida currently posted on the CDC COVID Tracker are incorrect,” it wrote in a tweet shortly after midnight.

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Instead of the 28,317 new cases that the CDC said Florida logged on Sunday, the actual number was 15,319, it said.

While CDC officials didn’t return an email for comment, it updated its online report late Tuesday afternoon.

One of the state’s leading epidemiologists said it appears the federal agency made a simple math error.

“It appears the CDC divided by two instead of three,” said Jason Salemi, an epidemiologist at the University of South Florida, who runs one of the most comprehensive and closely watched COVID-19 trackers in the state.

Friday's record of 21,500 new COVID cases in one day still stands

Instead of spreading the 56,386 cases the state recorded from Friday through Sunday over three days, it spread them over two days, which inflated the one-day tally, he said.

The only significance was that Florida didn’t set a new one-day record on Sunday for new cases. The record, set on Friday with 21,500 new cases, still stands.

But, Florida has consistently reported more new cases than any other state in the nation although Louisiana, which has tallied 810 cases per 100,000 residents, has topped the Sunshine State in terms of per capita infections.

Even though Florida is second to Louisiana in that category, the number of state residents stricken with the highly contagious respiratory disease continues to soar.

A record 15,169 people in Florida were hospitalized for treatment of COVID-19 on Tuesday, a 31.7% increase in a week, according to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

In response to burgeoning caseloads, the VA Medical Center in Riviera Beach announced it was canceling “non-urgent” elective surgeries. It also urged veterans to switch to virtual doctors' visits “to reduce the spread of the illness.”

While Baptist Health South has said elective surgeries were being “evaluated” at its hospitals, including Boca Regional and Bethesda east and west hospitals, it hasn’t said they have been cancelled.

With cases surging, local officials said information is critical.

Instead of criticizing the CDC, state health officials should re-activate its online COVID-19 dashboard, local doctors and elected officials said.

Florida is one of a handful of states in the nation that updates its numbers only weekly. Most states issue reports at least on weekdays.

“You have to know what you’re dealing with,” U.S. Rep. Lois Frankel said of the need for daily reports. “The public has to understand how serious this is.”

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Further, the West Palm Beach Democrat said, employers, both public and private, need the information to know what steps they need to take to protect their customers and their workers.

County Commissioner Gregg Weiss agreed. “It’s important for the public to know what’s happening as it’s occurring,” he said. 

While federal agencies,  such as the CDC and HHS offer statewide information about the current state of the pandemic, little local data is available, he said.

“They need to go back to daily reporting of the number of cases and the availability of hospital beds and ICU beds,” he said.

At a press conference in Jacksonville, Gov. Ron DeSantis said he would talk to state health officials about resuming daily reports, particularly since the state’s numbers were “misreported” on Monday.

“We’re trying to decide if it makes sense to at least put out something,” he said. “Stay tuned on that. We’ll see what happens.”

The daily reports ceased when the spread of the disease ebbed in early June before the highly contagious delta variant strain of the virus took off.

While DeSantis lauded the weekly reports released each Friday, they don’t include key benchmarks, such as how many people have died in each of the state’s 67 counties, how many people in each county are fully vaccinated or the daily availability of hospital beds.

Salemi said he isn’t convinced daily reports are necessary.

“A lot of people think it’s a button push,” he said. “But state epidemiologists have to spend hours and hours looking over every data set.”

He said their time could be better spent talking to local health officials about the trends they are seeing and ways to curb the spread of the disease.

“We pay too much attention to the daily numbers,” he said. “Looking at seven- and 14-day averages is more important.”

Local officials said they understand one-day spikes happen so it’s good to take the long view.

However, in recent weeks, the number of infections have been rapidly increasing, stretching the capacity of local hospitals and worrying the parents of young children, who can’t get vaccinated.

Frankel said she and other Democratic members of Congress appealed to DeSantis weeks ago to resume daily reporting. He never responded.

She said she is done writing letters or making formal appeals.

“I'm going to focus on Palm Beach County,” she said. “We're going to have to save ourselves."

jmusgrave@pbpost.com