Fort Lauderdale, Fla.— An error by the Florida Department of Health produced a COVID-19 positivity rate for children of nearly one-third, a sensational figure that played into the argument over whether schools must reopen.
A week after releasing that statistic, the department took it back without explanation. The next weekly report on kids and COVID-19 showed the rate had plunged to 13.4%.
The department blamed a “computer system programming mistake” for the error, in response to questions from the South Florida Sun-Sentinel. Specialists stated the change and the failure to explain it to the public calls into question the state’s information at a time when precise and credible information is important to a society facing an unmatched health crisis.
” It’s unacceptable to publish info that changes so dramatically that it calls for description, and then to not supply any explanation,” said Jason Salemi, associate professor of public health at the University of South Florida College of Public Health in Tampa. “I’m attempting to get an understanding of why the number altered a lot, what underlies it– and can we trust this new number.”
The unexplained revision of the kid positivity rate follows months of grievances and legal fights over what lots of see as a lack of openness in the COVID-19 information supplied by the administration of Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis.
In the early days of the pandemic, before the majority of people had any idea that coronavirus was spreading in Florida, the state declined to disclose the presence of thought cases, pointing out personal privacy issues. The state then declined to make public the number of deaths at individual assisted living home, concurring to do so only under legal pressure from news organizations. And after producing a nationally-praised website on COVID-19, the state Department of Health fired the website’s manager, who has given that submitted a whistleblower grievance saying she had actually been penalized for declining to falsify information.
” Each time journalists want more, it’s a battle to get it,” said Pamela Marsh, president of the First Change Structure, a Florida nonprofit group that promotes open federal government. “In the extremely early days, the state would not provide the names of retirement home. Then they gave the names, then the press requested numbers within