The state of Florida changed the way it was reporting coronavirus fatalities in the state, resulting in number of deaths reported each day and backloading data so the current status of the pandemic in the state appears less deadly, the Miami Herald reports.

About three weeks ago, the Florida Department of Health changed their dataset to record the date of the death of patient, rather than the day the death was officially recorded, as most other states do.  The result is that as fatalities are reported, they are posted on past days, giving a false picture of the current impact of the virus and an overly rosy forecast on the seven-day trend.

If one were to chart the last week’s fatalities in Florida using the previous method, it would show Florida with an average of 262 deaths over each of the past seven days.  Using the current method, Florida’s Department of Health is able to record just 46 “new deaths” on average over the past week. 

Florida will then go back and adjust the daily totals as death certificates get registered in the state.  The DeSantis administration can make overly-optimistic statements about daily coronavirus deaths, knowing that those numbers are not reflective of the actual state of the virus in Florida and even claiming that the current trendline is declining, when in fact it is rising dramatically.

Shivani Patel, a social epidemiologist and assistant professor at Emory University told the Herald that the move is “extremely problematic,” especially since it came without warning or explanation during a rise in cases, and that it reflects an “artificial decline” without reason.

“When you have big surges in deaths, the deaths by date reported will always show an increase while deaths by date occurred will go down,” Jason Salemi, an epidemiologist at the University of South Florida who has been tracking the state’s COVID data, said.  “Someone could have died yesterday and we may not know about it for a week, or two weeks.”

When the CDC continued to use the established methodology for reporting coronavirus fatalities in the state, the DeSantis administration took to Twitter to complain about the federal government’s ignoring Florida’s claimed decline in cases.

“As a result of data discrepancies that have occurred, this week, FDOH worked quickly and efficiently with CDC to ensure accurate display of data on their website the same day,” state Department of Health spokesperson Weesam Khoury told the Herald in a statement at the time. “To proactively ensure accurate data is consistently displayed, the Department will begin daily submission of a complete renewed set of case data to CDC, including retrospective COVID-19 cases.”