Florida halts release of new COVID-19 numbers

Lab mix-up led to dumped results

Florida health officials announced Saturday they were forced to delay the release of their coronavirus report that provides a daily look at the numbers of new infections, deaths and percentages of positive COVID-19 test results.

The official reason: A laboratory on Friday night dumped about 400,000test results that had previously been submitted, mucking up the ability to accurately process the state’s much-watched pandemic data.

“State epidemiologists are currently working to reconcile the data, which will take a day to finish,” the state Health Department said in a news release. “Therefore, thedaily report will resume tomorrow.”

Officials blamed the problem on a private company called Helix Laboratory, saying it would take time to “de-duplicate” the results.

The state said there was no delay on people finding out if they were infected with the disease.

“The Department remains committed to providing Floridians with the most accurate, up-to-date COVID-19 testing and surveillance information available,” the release said.

But Saturday’s development follows a series of testing lapses that have undermined confidence in the official data.

■ On Sept. 1, Florida severed ties with national lab giant Quest Diagnostics because of what Gov. Ron DeSantis slammed as the “most egregious dump” of a backlog of 75,000 test results from as early as April. Quest apologized and pointed to an otherwise solid track record.

■ On Aug. 12, state officials reported that it had received a back logo f4,000-plus test results froma Miami-Dade County lab called Niznik Lab Corp., which skewed data for the day.

■ In July, the state complained that numerous labs were providing only positive test results and ordered them to provide negative findings aswell.

DeSantis said the data discrepancies can cause problems for local public health officials relying on the data to determine the prevalence of the virus and appropriate responses.

“Some of this data is just flawed. Some of these test results can be dumped over many, many weeks, and in this case many, many months,” he complained. “I’ve been preaching, be wary of some of these test results.”

Florida had been averaging about 2,400 cases and 90 deaths per day on the state reports. There were 2,908 new cases and 118 deaths listed on Friday’s report.

There is usually a lag of several weeks between the date of death and confirmation as a virus fatality on the daily statistical tallies.

The official COVID-19 report, last updated Friday, shows 15,186 Florida resident deaths. In addition, 186 non-resident deaths have been attributed to the virus in the state.

Florida’s COVID-19 death rate is 11th among states with 70 deaths per 100,000 people, according to the CDC. That’s higher than the national rate of 64 deaths per 100,000.

At least 7.68 million people in the United States have been infected with the novel coronavirus and 214,007 are known to have died as of about 2:30 p.m. Saturday, according to Johns Hopkins University’s Coronavirus Resource Center.

At least 37 million people across the world have tested positive for COVID-19 and 1,069,836 people have died fromthe disease, according to JohnsH opkins. The U.S. has had the most COVID-19 cases and deaths of any country. The U.S. has 4.3% of theworld’s population, but 20.8% of theworld’s cases and 20% of theworld’s deaths.