FL-UBBED

State Audit Exposes Woeful Extent of Florida’s Early COVID-19 Data Collection

Data on cases and death collected by health officials was often incomplete, incorrect, or missing entirely.

Data pertaining to COVID-19 cases and deaths collected by Florida health officials in the first months of the pandemic was often incomplete, incorrect, or missing entirely, according to a new state audit. The state auditor general’s office released its report on Monday following a year-long probe analyzing Florida’s response to the pandemic between March and October 2020. The report’s results are grim. Auditors found that nearly 60 percent of 2,600 tests taken at three state facilities never returned results; of those that did, nearly 60 percent failed to list crucial ethnic data. Evidence of poor contract tracing was also found, with the report showing that 23 percent of infected individuals were never told of their positive tests. Those who were contacted were often told over a week after testing, in contravention of official guidelines. A spokesperson for the Florida Department of Health disputed the report’s findings, saying the auditor general’s office had misunderstood some “of the purpose of different datasets” and had failed to consider the “huge advancement we’ve made in modernizing our reporting systems.”