The numbers are looking good in Florida as it works to reduce new cases of the coronavirus in the state. Good, yes, but they still don’t add up. And that’s a problem.
Gov. Ron DeSantis still refuses to release full and complete information about the Floridians who have died from COVID-19, including their names. As egregious, the governor has muzzled the state’s 21 medical examiners who had been releasing the information. And, as has been his bad habit, the governor is making sure the Department of Health continues to slow-walk any disclosure concerning virus infections and deaths in the state’s 3,800 nursing homes and assisted living facilities.
A RECORD LOW
On Tuesday, DeSantis announced that Florida achieved a new record low in the rate of positive test results for the coronavirus. He said that only about 2.5% of almost 24,000 tests confirmed an infection on Monday. The test results were the most Florida has received in a single day.
It’s an achievement worth crowing about. Though the state as a whole has not seen the stunning number of cases that, perhaps, New York has experienced, Florida’s 38,000 cases and more than 1,500 deaths should still leave us all shaken, especially those government officials, including the governor, who have pushed hard to jump-start Florida’s tourist-dependent economy and get folks spending money again, even as the pandemic still looms out there.
“We got 23,884 test results,” DeSantis said at a midday briefing Tuesday. “Out of that massive batch, it only yielded 589 new Florida cases.”
Which leads us to warn: Not so fast, governor.
Unfortunately, there are the confirmed case numbers that DeSantis gladly shares and those that he refuses to reveal. And that’s the problem.
NO RETESTING
For instance, the state continues to keep Floridians in the dark about what is — and isn’t — happening in the state’s 3,800 nursing homes and assisted living facilities.
It has been like pulling teeth to get the state to release the specifics. It took the threat of a lawsuit by the Miami Herald and other media outlets, plus pressure from worried families to shake loose even insufficient data. Last month, the Department of Health released the names of those nursing homes where the coronavirus has been found.
But even a group of nursing homes now decries the haphazard way in which the National Guard, which DeSantis ordered to do testing in the facilities, has been carried out. At some homes, testing is random, scattershot. At others, everyone is tested. It’s a recipe for further infection, and deaths, among this vulnerable population.
But tests are only as reliable as the window in which they are taken. There is no retesting, so there is no way to find out who might have been asymptomatic among the workers. Remember, family visits have been prohibited. The workers go out into the infected world when their shifts end. From the numbers the state finally released, we know that confirmed cases are on the rise.
But here’s what we don’t know: how much testing is being done; how many are repeated tests to confirm that those who were infected are no longer. In fact, some nursing homes are hiring their own testing companies to more completely screen workers.
Now, even the state’s own top medical examiner is crying foul, calling the governor’s latest attempt to hide information a “sham.”
Take off the rose-colored glasses, Gov. DeSantis, and give Floridians an honest look at the coronavirus’ true toll.
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