CDC Unilaterally Altered Florida’s Covid Death-Count Data, State’s Department of Health Alleges

The Florida Department of Health (DOH) is alleging that the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) erroneously changed the state’s public-use Covid-19 data without consulting the DOH and failed to respond to multiple attempts to correct the error.

Jeremy Redfern, press secretary for the Florida DOH, explained that his agency transfers Covid data to the CDC several times a week. The data is then uploaded to the CDC’s database for third parties, which is “where everybody would go to download all of these data if they wanted to build their own system,” Redfern said.

Last week, the CDC unilaterally deleted roughly 20,000 Covid-caused deaths from its third-party database, but not from its own dashboard.

“Instead of calling us and verifying these data, they decided to switch to a different field in the data set and just delete a bunch of our deaths,” he told National Review. Redfern alleges that it took the DOH “about a week” to get ahold of the CDC to correct the error. Only on Thursday did the CDC send their data file back to DOH’s epidemiology team for correction.

Last week, Reuters reported that the CDC had removed “72,277 deaths previously reported across 26 states, including 416 pediatric deaths” from its data set “because its algorithm was accidentally counting deaths that were not COVID-19-related.” Redfern believes that missing deaths from Florida were included in that batch of deletions.

“All those cases they deleted they’re going to have to put back on there. And my guess is they’re not going to tell anybody that they’re putting it back on there. They’re just going to do it and hope that nobody notices,” said Redfern, referring to the deaths reported by the Sunshine State.

“It’s definitely not new — for them to cause issues,” he added.

In August, the CDC posted incorrect data exaggerating Florida’s weekend case counts by 24,150 cases, a mistake that the Florida DOH said was entirely the fault of the CDC. “They didn’t provide any specific guidance as to why or how this mistake was made, but they did acknowledge that it was incorrect,” Dr. Shamarial Roberson, formerly Florida’s deputy secretary for health, told National Review at the time.

While it’s unlikely that other mistakes as large as the one Redfern alleges would have slipped through the crack at other points in the pandemic, it is possible that smaller adjustments might have. Since the data is supposed to come from the states, and because those in the DOH assumed that they’d be consulted before any changes were made to it, they don’t typically check up on the public-use data. The fact that the CDC did not confirm totals with the state led Redfern to draw the conclusion that “anybody that has been relying on that data for the past two years basically got bad data from CDC.”

“The New York Times pulls from this public use data. Researchers pulled from this public use data, this is where everybody would go to download all of these data if they wanted to build their own system,” he continued.

Florida’s response to the pandemic has been the subject of much debate, with its harshest critics, including conspiracy theorist Rebekah Jones — a former DOH employee — falsely alleging that the state has intentionally and systematically understated case and death counts.

“If you’re going to make a big change in numbers, or you’re confused, don’t just make an executive decision with our data. Call us,” stressed Redfern, who said that “there’s been enough conspiracy theories around Florida Department Health.”

The CDC has not responded to a request for comment.