Florida Dep’t of Health reports impossible vaccination rates, withholds ‘confidential’ COVID-19 data, Dems say

The Florida Department of Health is reporting impossible vaccination percentages to at least one county while blocking state lawmakers from seeing certain COVID-19 information, according to Democratic state lawmakers.

During a virtual conference Thursday with six other House members, Rep. Christine Hunschofsky of Coconut Creek said reports the state department provided to her office showed some Broward ZIP codes with vaccination rates over 100%, which, of course, is impossible.

“For example, we have a (ZIP) code, 33019, that says there’s a 137% vaccination rate. We have (another, 33326), that has a 118% vaccination rate,” she said. “When I was asked by my constituents how is that possible, I wasn’t getting very clear answers from the Department of Health.”

A map of vaccination rates as of Aug. 3 from the department, which Hunschofsky’s office provided to Florida Politics, confirms her assertion. It also shows other ZIP codes with similarly outlandish rates, including 33315 (170%), 33308 (103%) and 33323 (107%).

Florida Politics requested and is awaiting clarification from the Health Department.

Aside from being unbelievable and therefore untrustworthy, Hunschofsky said, those percentages may foster a false sense of security and lead local officials and the residents they serve to make ill-advised decisions.

“It … makes it more difficult for those of us on the ground, those of us who have neighbors and family members, to see where we need to target to encourage people to get the vaccine,” she said. “In fact, I recently heard a local official speak about the high vaccination rate in the area as a reason that maybe it’s not important to mandate masks.”

Making matters more difficult, said Rep. Carlos Smith of Orlando, is that the Department of Health is withholding materials from the public by citing exemptions from the state’s Sunshine Law.

Smith said the department denied his office’s public records request for daily Orange County pediatric COVID-19 hospitalizations and cases, telling him the data he requested was “confidential and exempt from public disclosure.”

He posted a screenshot of the denial email on Twitter earlier this week.

“The records that we’re asking for … are not confidential as the state claims,” he said. “We’re not asking for patient names in hospitals or security information. We’re asking for raw numbers, the same raw numbers that we used to have throughout the pandemic.”

UPDATE: @HealthyFla officially DENIED my public records request for daily Orange County PEDIATRIC COVID hospitalizations + cases.

They claim this vital public health data is "confidential".

I call BS! @GovRonDeSantis is hiding the truth & muzzling county health directors.👇🏽 https://t.co/ym6brhCDzJ pic.twitter.com/pwNcx18Msn

— Rep. Carlos G Smith (@CarlosGSmith) August 10, 2021

Smith also joined calls for state Surgeon General Scott Rivkees to set the record straight, particularly about youth COVID-19 infections.

“His experience brought him to this position, including the fact that he was the professor of pediatrics … at Yale, and also at the same time he used to chair the pediatrics department at USF College of Medicine,” he said. “I would like to hear from our state’s Surgeon General about the impact of COVID specifically on children and what needs to be done to certainly mitigate that impact.”

Hunschofsky and Smith met by Zoom with fellow Democratic Reps. Ramon Alexander of Tallahassee, Robin Bartleman of Weston, Dianne Hart of Tampa, Patricia Williams of Pompano Beach and Marie Woodson of Hollywood to call on Gov. Ron DeSantis to direct staff at the Florida Department of Health to bring back daily COVID-19 reporting.

Florida, which yesterday hit a single-day high for COVID-19 cases, with one of every 1,400 people in the state hospitalized with the virus, discontinued daily reports in June.

With cases skyrocketing as the highly transmissible delta variant spreads throughout Florida, matters are intensifying, up-to-date information is vital and still adhering to policies from months ago, when infections were on the downslide, is counterintuitive, Hunschofsky said.

“We’re used to hurricanes in the state of Florida. So, as we have a hurricane … five days out, six days out, where the threat isn’t as imminent, shall we say, we get updates … every 12 hours,” she said. “But as the hurricane gets closer — for example, in the case of COVID, as the rates went down, we got less frequent information because it wasn’t as imminent a threat — but as a hurricane gets closer, we get updates every six hours. We get updates every three hours. Why don’t we get that information so we can prepare and do the best we can to keep our communities safe now that we have the COVID numbers rising?”