While
the U.S. has reported more cases and deaths than any other country, the method
for counting COVID-19 deaths varies by state. In testimony before the Senate earlier this month, Dr.
Anthony Fauci, the nation's top infectious disease expert, said the actual
number of people who've died as a result of the pandemic is "almost
certainly" higher than what's been counted.
Such
data has been the basis for how quickly states are beginning to open up and
return to a sense of normalcy. But government officials in a number of states
are facing questions about how open and honest they're being about how the virus is impacting their state.
"Accurate,
complete and timely information is the best way to understand, respond to and
limit the impact of the virus on both health and the economy," Dr. Tom
Frieden, who ran the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention under former
President Barack Obama, told NBC News.
"This
helps to set realistic expectations on how the pandemic will affect people's
lives and to inform the required changes in behavior to prevent the spread of the
virus," he added.
Slide 1 of 50: Indy Car
driver Charlie Kimball rides his bicycle down the main straightaway at
Indianapolis Motor Speedway, Sunday, May 24, 2020, in Indianapolis. The
Indianapolis 500 was postponed because of the coronavirus pandemic. The race
will instead be held Aug. 23, three months later than its May 24 scheduled
date. (AP Photo/Darron Cummings)
Next Slide
1/50
SLIDES © Darron Cummings/AP Photo
Indy Car driver
Charlie Kimball rides his bicycle down the main straightaway at Indianapolis
Motor Speedway, on May 24, in Indianapolis. The Indianapolis 500 was postponed
because of the coronavirus pandemic. The race will instead be held Aug. 23,
three months later than its May 24 scheduled date.
Georgia
officials have apologized and corrected what was described as a "processing error"
that wrongly showed a downward trend in the number of new
daily infections in the state, making it appear as if new infections had
dropped every day for two weeks. The error was at least the third in three
weeks, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported.
Georgia
was among the first states to launch its reopening. Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp, a
Republican, said the state on Tuesday recorded its the lowest number of hospitalized patients since it began tracking
such data in early April.
In
the neighboring state of Florida, which has also moved expeditiously in
reopening swathes of its economy, several data-related controversies also have
brewed.
According
to internal emails obtained by the Tampa Bay Times, state officials directed a
top Florida Department of Health data manager earlier this month to remove data
from public view that showed Florida residents had reported
coronavirus-associated symptoms before cases were officially announced. The
emails showed that the data manager, Rebekah Jones, had complied with the order
but said it was the "wrong call."
Jones
was taken off her role maintaining the state's coronavirus dashboard one day
after that directive. She told a local CBS affiliate that she refused to "manually
change data to drum up support for the plan to reopen" Florida. Last week,
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, a Republican, said Jones was under "active
criminal charges" for cyberstalking and cyber sexual harassment.
Meanwhile,
Florida officials last month stopped releasing the list of coronavirus deaths
being compiled by the state's medical examiners, which had at times shown a
higher death toll than the total being published by the state. State officials
said that list needed to be reviewed as a result of the
discrepancy.
A spokesman for the state Health Department said the medical examiners had a different method for
reporting deaths and that it was untrue "that deaths have been
hidden."
"The
government has one mission; academics and scholars have a very different
mission," Dr. Dean Hart, an expert on viral transmission and former
Columbia University professor who has run for the New York State Assembly as a
Democrat told NBC News.
"As
a scientist, I'm looking for the truth, the heck with who it hurts
politically," he added.
Amid
reopening in Arizona, the state Department of Health Services cut off a team of
Arizona State and University of Arizona experts who provided pandemic modeling
specific to the state, saying it was no longer needed as the state preferred to
use a federal model. After a backlash, the Health Department reinstated the team, though it's unclear
whether state officials are using the local universities' work in their
decision-making.
Since
that dust-up, Arizona State released new data showing infections and
hospitalizations in the state could soar this summer.
The CDC and at least 11 other states have been combining the results of viral
tests showing active infections with the results of antibody tests, which show
whether someone had been infected in the past. While boosting a state's total
testing number, health experts have said that practice does not give a proper
picture of how the virus is spreading, the Associated Press
reported.
The
CDC announced it planned to separate the data and some of those states have
stopped doing so or committed to change course, CNN reported.
In
New York City, the hardest-hit locale in the nation, local officials last week
released COVID-19 data are broken down by zip code after pressure to
go beyond the county-by-county totals that had previously
been shown. Such information made it easier to understand which communities
were being most affected by the virus.
The
top issue nationally related to the publication of specific coronavirus
data involving nursing home cases and deaths, where state and local
officials have faced intense scrutiny over the collection and release of such
information. The virus has hit nursing homes exceptionally hard — a result
of both their residents' vulnerability and policies states and localities have
put into place.
In
one such example, Arizona officials argued this month they should not
reveal the names of facilities with outbreaks because it could give those
nursing homes a stigma and could lead to discrimination against them. The argument was made in response to a lawsuit from Arizona news outlets demanding
the state provide information on COVID-19 cases in nursing homes and other
data.
In
Pennsylvania, state officials released such data last week after weeks
of delay and in the face of significant pressure.
The
federal government, on the other hand, plans to publish such information by the end of May.
Hart
said more information on nursing homes could paint a clearer picture of what
happened specifically in New York with the spread of COVID-19. New York Gov.
Andrew Cuomo, a Democrat, has come under fire for his administration's March
order that nursing homes must accept coronavirus patients. That order was reversed earlier this month.
The
group Frieden now leads as president and CEO, Resolve to Save Lives, released a list of suggested criteria to adjust social
distancing measures based on key indicators that he believes should be
available in every city, state, and country. Those indicators include case-count trends and health
system and testing capacity to create an alert index for a specific area's
level of risk.
He
said much would be improved if the CDC would provide and explain the meaning of
such data, adding though "much more information is available, it has not
been standardized, validated, and presented in clear and compelling ways."
