The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) confirmed it will adjust Florida’s COVID-19 case numbers after the state’s department of health said the agency rolled several days’ worth of cases into one day.
A spokesperson for the CDC
told Fox News that it'll correct the information and work with the Florida Department of Health.
Representatives for the CDC didn’t respond to a request from The Epoch Times for comment by press time.
Dr. Shamarial Roberson, Florida’s deputy secretary for health,
told National Review that the CDC confirmed to the state that it had committed an error and will correct the issue.
“Accurate data was provided to the CDC, but the incorrect number for Friday, Saturday, and Sunday was displayed on the website,” Roberson said, noting that the CDC was made aware of their mistake by Florida officials on Aug. 9.
After several media outlets picked up the CDC’s data on Aug. 9, the Florida Department of Health publicly asked the federal health agency to correct its information. The CDC initially said that 28,317 cases of COVID-19, the illness caused by the
CCP (Chinese Communist Party) virus, were reported on Aug. 8, but the department of health said there were 15,319 cases reported that day.
“Wrong again. The number of cases @CDCgov released for Florida today is incorrect,” the department wrote in response to a report from the South Florida Sun-Sentinel on Twitter. “They combined MULTIPLE days into one. We anticipate CDC will correct the record.”
Responding to another report from a local media outlet, the state agency wrote on
Twitter: “This is not accurate. Florida follows CDC guidelines reporting cases Monday through Friday, other than holidays. Consequently, each Monday or Tuesday, there will be two or three days of data reported at a time. When data is published, it is attributed evenly to the previous days.”
The CDC appears to have
revised the total cases for Florida, with the agency stating that there were 21,487 cases reported on Aug. 7 and 19,584 reported on Aug. 8.
“We are trying to figure out if that has been corrected and if not, whether it would just make more sense [for Florida] to maybe at least put out something. So, stay tuned on that. We'll see what happens,” Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, a Republican, told
reporters on Aug. 10.
It isn’t clear why the agency rolled several days of cases into one day.
Some Florida Democrat officials said that due to the confusion, Florida should reactive its daily dashboard for COVID-19 cases. The state currently reports on COVID-19 cases on a weekly basis.
“You have to know what you’re dealing with,” Rep. Lois Frankel (D-Fla.) said of the need for the state to provide daily reports,
according to the Palm Beach Post. “The public has to understand how serious this is.”
The incident comes as DeSantis has been repeatedly criticized by Democrats and corporate media outlets for how he’s handling an increase in COVID-19 cases. Recently, President Joe Biden and his administration have repeatedly singled out DeSantis and Florida, perhaps in a lead-up to the 2024 presidential election, prompting a sharp response from the Republican governor.
“And what has [Biden] done? He’s imported more virus from around the world by having a wide-open southern border. You have hundreds of thousands of people pouring across every month,” DeSantis
said at a recent event.
“He rejects science, because he denies the fact that people that recover from COVID have long-lasting immunity.”
