Florida stops releasing medical examiners coronavirus death counts after they report higher total – Salon

The health department also refused to release information about infections in assisted living homeup until news outlets demanded the info.

“It’s just shocking to me the level of disturbance,” Barbara Petersen of the First Amendment Foundation informed The Times.

A spokesperson for the health department in Hillsborough County argued that the disparities in the state’s numbers might be because of a lag in reporting. Florida likewise excludes tourists and seasonal citizens who passed away in the state, although medical examiners do include them.

Florida health officials have stopped releasing real-time coronavirus death data reported by medical inspectors after they showed a higher variety of casualties than the main state overall.

The Sunshine State has not launched lists assembled by the state Medical Examiners Commission in the last 9 days. The updates stopped after The Tampa Bay Times reported that the medical examiners ‘death count was 10 % greater than the number reported by the Florida Department of Health.

The health department informed The Times that it “participated in teleconference” with police authorities to express “personal privacy concerns for the individuals that passed away associated to COVID-19.”

The demand came after the health department last month attempted to encourage the Miami-Dade County medical examiner’s office to

block access to death records, according to The Miami Herald. The county released the data, anyway.

The efforts to keep public health information under wraps came as

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, a Republican, transferred to resume parts of the state’s economy after he postponed providing a stay-at-home orderearlier in the break out. DeSantis on Wednesday announced the strategy to reopen, as the state saw its biggest spike in coronavirus deathssince the pandemic began.

Florida’s Democratic congressional delegation composed a letter to DeSantis recently, which questioned the “inconsistencies in between COVID-19 death tracking techniques utilized by the Florida Department of Health and county medical inspectors.”

“We ask that you deal with the Department of Health and county medical examiners to ensure that COVID-19 cases are discovered and reported properly,” they said, calling for a “in-depth description of the public health justification” for leaving out nonresidents from the state’s death count.

Dr. Stephen Nelson, who heads the commission, informed the outlet that the modification in policy followed state health authorities “intervened.”

Nelson said the authorities informed him they prepare to redact causes of deaths and descriptions of cases from the data, which he said would make the lists “worthless.”

“This is no various than any other public record we handle,” Nelson added. “It’s paid for by taxpayer dollars, and the taxpayers have a right to know.”

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Nelson said the lists have actually always been revealed considering that medical inspectors started to compile them in 1992.

Paul Petrino, who runs the Palm Beach County medical inspector’s office, informed The Times that county attorneys instructed him to stop launching the numbers recently.

“I was really taken aback when they called us,” Petrino said, adding that the information was important to reveal so that people have precise info about the health crisis. “I ‘d dislike to see anything prevent that. Hopefully, it will not.”

“This is no various than any other public record we deal with,” Nelson included. “I ‘d hate to see anything prevent that.

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