Florida loses legal battle to keep covid data secret

The state government of Ron DeSantis in Florida, which manipulated covid data to show deaths falling during a surge, has agreed to release old data and to publish new covid data, abandoning a two year legal battle to keep the data secret.

Although the state continues to deny wrongdoing, Florida’s Department of Health agreed in an out-of-court settlement to pay the $152 000 legal fees of its opponents, which include a former Democratic congressman, the Florida Center for Government Accountability, the First Amendment Foundation, and several media outlets including the Associated Press, Miami Herald, and Washington Post.

Florida initially maintained a daily pandemic dashboard giving vital daily data on infections, hospital admissions, and deaths, but in June 2021, during a lull in cases, it was one of several Republican governed states to scale back its reporting, moving from daily to weekly reports.

Like all states, Florida continued to report data to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). But in August 2021, as case numbers began to rise, the state stopped assigning deaths to the date they were notified, and instead listed the actual death date. This created a temporary false picture of falling deaths just as fatalities were surging, an analysis by the Miami Herald found. In one week in August, Florida reported an average of 46 daily deaths to the CDC, when under the previous system it would have reported 262.1

At the same time, Florida’s health department sent out a series of late night tweets accusing the CDC of misrepresenting data, but without any evidence or explanation.

The change came as DeSantis began to jockey for the Republican presidential nomination, positioning himself as a champion of “medical freedom” and supporting legislation that allowed the governor to overturn local mask and vaccine mandates.

Carlos Guillermo Smith, who was then a Democratic state congressman, sued in August 2021 to obtain the missing data, after his public records request was denied by officials who said it was henceforth “confidential.” His suit was soon joined by newspapers and public interest groups.

A breakthrough in the case came this March, when an appellate judge ordered Florida to produce records which the state had told the court did not exist. They were found to contain the data sought by the litigants. The final settlement also obliges Florida to keep publishing detailed covid data until 2026.

“The health department lied about the existence of these public records in court and did everything to restrict information and downplay the threat of covid even while the delta variant ripped through Florida—a decision that cost many lives,” said Smith in a statement following the settlement.

More than 23 000 Floridians died during the delta surge. The state has seen more than 7 813 000 cases, and 91 590 deaths, the tenth highest per capita death rate of 50 states.

Florida’s government continues to take positions at odds with national health authorities. The state’s surgeon general Joseph Ladapo, a DeSantis ally, became the only state health leader to recommend against coronavirus vaccination for children and recently urged people aged under 65 to shun booster shots. In March he drew an unprecedented letter of rebuke from the CDC director and FDA commissioner over his misrepresentation of findings in a state sponsored study of vaccine adverse events.2

DeSantis gained early traction in the Republican primary, but has since lost ground, and his latest fundraising and polling numbers show a presidential campaign in free fall.