FLORIDA — During the first eight months of the pandemic — from March 1, 2020, to Oct. 9, 2020 — Florida's COVID-19 data was "inaccurate or incomplete," according to a report released Monday by the Florida Auditor General's office.

The inaccuracy of the data — which came from the Agency for Health Care Administration, the Department of Health and the Division of Emergency Management — "impacted the state's ability to accurately report COVID-19 at the beginning of the pandemic," the auditor's report said. (Read the complete report below.)

The state used the Merlin system to collect data related to the COVID-19 pandemic, including the number of cases, hospitalizations and deaths.

The auditor's office said, "Certain COVID-19 data included in Merlin did not appear complete or contained anomalies that would limit the accuracy and usefulness of reported information."

The report compared Merlin death records to Bureau of Vital Statistics death records where coronavirus was included as a cause or contributing factor of death and noticed differences between the records.

The report showed that 2,495 death records in Merlin were not included in the Vital Statistics records, while 3,082 death records in Vital Statistics were not included in Merlin.

The number of reported coronavirus tests were off, as well, the report found.

About 5.5 million COVID-19 test profiles in the Merlin system were either missing or had incorrect information, including the race, ethnicity, gender, age, state, county, city and/or street address of the individual tested.

The auditor found that state health officials didn't routinely check the data it collected for accuracy and often didn't follow up when there were discrepancies. The report also shows that facilities, including hospitals and nursing homes, didn't always report the required information to the DOH.

DOH management told auditors "that the data quality issues were due to having to rely on data being sent from the laboratories, along with the large number of cases and limited resources to address data accuracy and completeness issues."

The report also found that the DOH was lax on contact tracing. The auditor examined all COVID-19-positive results at the time, about 730,000, and found that in nearly 169,000 cases, the individuals were not contacted nor was contact attempted, which is against the department's guidelines.

In a statement tweeted Monday night, Jeremy Redfern, a spokesperson for the Florida Department of Health, said there are several reasons why COVID-19 deaths counted by Vital Statistics would differ from the DOH's surveillance reports and said "differences in the number of deaths reported by the two systems are expected."

"Vital Statistics deaths for COVID-19 are determined by the certifying physician completing the death certificate. For it to be considered a COVID-19 death within Vital Statistics records, COVID-19 needs to be listed on the death certificate either as an immediate cause, underlying cause or a significant condition contributing to death. Additionally, Vital Statistics are counted in the jurisdiction where the individual died and not where the individual lived," according to Redfern's statement.

The spokesperson said that COVID-19 deaths counted for public health surveillance records "are classified using a national case definition that classifies a COVID-19 case based on a recent positive COVID-19 laboratory test result, symptom and exposure criteria. Vital Statistics deaths are also included in the national case definition, but COVID-19 does not need to be listed on the death certificate for the death to count as a COVID-19 associated surveillance death."

Read the full report from the Florida Auditor General's office:

COVID Data Audit Report fro... by Tiffany Razzano

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