Florida reports 7,569 COVID-19 cases because lab ‘dumped’ months-old tests, DeSantis says
The Florida Department of Health on Tuesday reported 7,569 new confirmed cases of COVID-19 because, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’ office said, Quest Diagnostics suddenly unloaded 80,000 test results, some of which were as old as April.
After what DeSantis called a “dump” of test results, the state of Florida dumped Quest Diagnostics.
“To drop this much unusable and stale data is irresponsible and Quest has abdicated their ability to perform a testing function in Florida,” the Florida Department of Health said on its Twitter feed. DeSantis “is ordering all Florida executive agencies to sever their COVID-19 testing relationships with Quest effective immediately.”
“This is the most egregious dump we have,’‘ DeSantis said Tuesday at a media event in Jacksonville.
He said that Quest has had some of the worst backlogs in the past and that people are using the information on a local level to make decisions.
“This is not the way a lot of this information was designed to be used. We do want data but some of this data is just flawed,’‘ he said. “The problem is when you’re sloppy with it, it ends up impacting people’s lives and again, it shouldn’t be that way.... It was not the best data to be going off of in hindsight.”
Quest issued this statement: “Quest Diagnostics takes seriously our responsibility to report laboratory data to public health authorities in a timely manner to aid pandemic response. Due to a technical issue, our reporting of a subset of public health COVID-19 test data to the Florida Department of Health was delayed. This subset involves nearly 75,000 of the approximately 1.4 million COVID-19 tests we had performed and reported to the state.
“We apologize for this matter and regret the challenge it poses for public health authorities in Florida. The issue has since been resolved. Importantly, the issue did not affect or delay reporting of test results to providers and patients.”
Before the case numbers were reported on the online dashboard, DeSantis spokesman Fred Piccolo alerted the Miami Herald that there would be a break in the downward trend case counts have been on the last two weeks. Monday’s 1,885 new cases reported was the lowest since June 12.
“The important thing to note that no one’s test results were withheld from them. They were just withheld from us,’‘ Piccolo said, adding that is a violation they are working on addressing.
The influx of data, some now no longer relevant, moved the statewide positive rate from 5.9% to 6.82%, Piccolo said. The number of new positive cases went from 3,782 to 7,596.
Piccolo said this will result in a new executive order from the governor who “has had it with these labs.”
Florida’s pandemic totals stand at 631,040 cases and, after the 187 deaths reported Tuesday, 11,518 deaths.
South Florida counties
▪ Miami-Dade added 2,149 confirmed cases and 100 deaths, bringing its pandemic totals to 159,059 and 2,537, respectively. The daily positivity rate is 9.59%, the 14th consecutive day of a goal of under 10%, as stated on Miami-Dade’s New Normal Dashboard. Monday’s daily positive test rate was 6.64%.
▪ Broward’s 1,124 new confirmed cases moved its pandemic total to 72,245. Three more deaths moved that total to 1,187. The daily positivity rate was 6.6%. Monday’s positive test rate of 4.15%, the lowest in weeks, the fourth consecutive day and seventh of the last 10 under 5%.
▪ Palm Beach County’s 422 new confirmed cases mean 42,387 have caught COVID-19 in Palm Beach. Of those people, 1,128 have died, including the nine reported Tuesday. Daily positivity rate was 4.26%. On Monday, it was 3.49%.
▪ Monroe County had nine new confirmed cases and no deaths, bringing its total to 1,743 with 16 deaths. Daily positivity rate was 3.75%. On Monday, it was 8.7%.
Current hospitalizations
As of the 11 a.m. Tuesday report from the state’s Agency for Health Care Administration, 3,621 people were currently hospitalized with a primary diagnosis of COVID-19, a reduction of 119 people from Monday.
The South Florida counties’ trends from the last few days continued: Miami-Dade down 40 to 643; Broward down 2, to 423; Palm Beach up 33 to 213; Monroe up 1 to 2.
Florida’s current hospitalization data does not always match the hospitalization data reported in Miami-Dade’s New Normal dashboard. Officials say this could be for a number of reasons including the frequency of daily updates.
According to the county, “the cases and positivity rates for Aug. 31 includes a one‐time historical data submission from a large laboratory that affected some counties. The percent positivity on Aug. 31 excluding the historical data submission was 8.02 percent.”
Miami-Dade had 786 people in the county hospitalized primarily because of COVID-19, a drop from Monday’s 786 and the 13th drop in 13 days. The county reports 70 new COVID patients were admitted to hospitals and 99 were discharged.
Testing
Testing, like hospitalizations, helps officials determine the virus’ progress and plays a role in deciding whether it is safe to lift stay-at-home orders and loosen restrictions. Miami-Dade will allow indoor dining and casinos to reopen Monday.
Tuesday, the state reported 112,831 people tested with a daily positivity rate of 6.77%. Through the pandemic 4,682,883 residents and non-residents have been tested in Florida with a 13.48 positive test rate.
Herald Staff Writer Daniel Chang contributed to this report.
This story was originally published September 1, 2020 at 1:55 PM with the headline "Florida reports 7,569 COVID-19 cases because lab ‘dumped’ months-old tests, DeSantis says."
