FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. – A Florida Department of Health error produced a COVID-19 positivity rate for children of nearly a third, a staggering number that played into the debate over whether schools should reopen.
A week after issuing that statistic, the department withdrew it without explanation. The following weekly report on children and COVID-19 showed that the rate had plummeted to 13.4%.
The department blamed a “computer programming error” for the error, in response to questions from the South Florida Sun-Sentinel. Experts said the change and lack of explanation to the public call into question state data at a time when accurate and reliable information is crucial for a society facing an unprecedented health crisis.
“It is unacceptable to post information that changes so dramatically that it warrants an explanation, and then not provide an explanation,” said Jason Salemi, an associate professor of epidemiology at the University of South Florida College of Public Health in Tampa. “I’m trying to understand why the number changed so much, what underlies it, and we can trust this new number.”
The inexplicable revision of the child positivity rate follows months of complaints and legal fights about what many see as a lack of transparency in the COVID-19 information provided by the administration of Florida Governor Ron DeSantis.
In the early days of the pandemic, before most people had any idea that the coronavirus was spreading in Florida, the state declined to reveal the presence of suspicious cases, citing privacy concerns. The state then refused to make public the number of deaths in individual nursing homes, and agreed to do so only under legal pressure from news organizations. And after producing a nationally praised website at COVID-19, the state Department of Health fired the site administrator, who has since filed a whistleblower complaint saying she had been punished for refusing to falsify data.
“Every time journalists want more, it’s hard to get it,” said Pamela Marsh, president of the Foundation’s First Amendment, a Florida nonprofit group that advocates open government. “In the early days, the state did not give the names of nursing homes. Then they gave the names, then the press asked for numbers inside the nursing homes. More recently, it took the state two to three weeks to provide hospitalization numbers. “
This information is vital, he said, as Floridians try to make real-world decisions to protect themselves and their families in a time of unprecedented uncertainty.
“All these decisions that we have to make, send our children to school, whether we buy for a week or two weeks, all these decisions that cannot be made in a vacuum or based on rumors from the neighborhood,” he said. . “We have to have good data. When you have family members in nursing homes and you’re trying to make decisions about their care, there are so many decisions that require good data because if you make a mistake, it will change your life. “
The 31.1% positivity rate for children was provided in the July 10 pediatric report from the health department, a weekly summary posted on the state health department website COVID-19. The new report, dated July 17, showed the sudden decline in the rate. The new report also showed what appeared to be a massive increase in testing. The number of children examined increased from 54,022 in the previous report to 173,520 in the subsequent report.
The state blamed children’s misstatements for not including thousands of negative results, artificially inflating the positivity rate.
“Initially, there was an error in pediatric reports that did not include a certain number of negative results,” the department said in an email. “That bug has since been corrected, and the current pediatric report available at FloridaHealthCOVID19.gov reflects the most current data available on pediatric COVID-19 cases.”
“It was a computer programming error specifically related to the production of the pediatric data report. As a result, a subset of negative pediatric test results were inadvertently excluded from the pediatric report. “
Even health officials seemed to ignore the children’s positivity rate. Dr. Alina Alonso, director of the Palm Beach County Health Department office, told county commissioners July 14 that the county’s infection rate for children had risen to an alarming level.
“It has risen to 33.6%,” he said. “That literally means that a third of the under-18s we tested for are positive. And although many of these, especially the younger children, are asymptomatic, when x-rays of their lungs are taken, they are seeing lung damage in these asymptomatic children. “
But a few days later, a report issued by the department Alonso works for reversed that shocking figure. The new report showed that the Palm Beach County rate had dropped to 14.1%, still high, but dramatically less than half the rate the previous week. Accompanying the decline was an apparent increase in Palm Beach County children’s test results of more than 200%, from 4,063 to 12,399, in a single week.
Experts say there is a “black box” quality to many basic state statistics, presented without the underlying data that could allow experts and the public to verify and understand them.
Florida was one of the first leaders among states to present easy-to-read daily updates of COVID-19, but it has lagged behind, said Olivier Lacan, a volunteer with the COVID Tracking Project, which tracks data across the country. He said the state does not report vital statistics, such as detailed racial breakdowns of cases and the number of COVID-19 patients in intensive care or ventilated units, and does not release the raw data that is used to produce the final numbers.
“Florida was surprisingly good from the start,” he said. “I think they are completely overrun. I think they do not have sufficient funds, they are understaffed, they have no experience with this type of thing. This is the meaning I get from them. I don’t think DOH was ready for a pandemic. It seems very casual, and now they are paralyzed. ”
The state positivity rate reported by the department, for example, is impossible to verify because the state of repeating tests on the same person is unclear. The positivity rate also combines the results of two types of tests, one of which produces a large number of false negatives, which would have the effect of skewing the positivity rate down.
Evan Nierman, chief executive of Red Banyan, a Fort Lauderdale-based communications and crisis management company, said Florida’s approach resembled that of President Donald Trump as he viewed data release through the prism of politics.
“At the end of the day, DeSantis is a great advocate for the president,” he said. “Republican governors are looking at their leader, President Trump, and the White House has shown a great appetite for politicizing COVID and wearing masks and data. When that’s the example that is set, you see Republican political leaders lining up behind that example and standing in line for that same approach. I think that is part of why we are seeing how it works in Florida. “
Salemi, a professor at the University of South Florida, said the state’s explanation of a programming error for the high rate of children is insufficient.
“What programming error? Why did it only happen in the pediatric report? Why not other age groups? I ask. “I don’t want to speculate that it is more than just an honest mistake, but I just want you to provide all the details to restore trust in all of us. People accept honest mistakes if they are explained and rectified. It’s not when the details about the data issues lack transparency. “
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