Last month, attorneys for the state health department moved to block the official death count from being made public after the Miami Herald sought information from the Miami-Dade Medical Examiner’s Office about COVID-19 deaths amid Florida’s coronavirus outbreak.⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
According to the paper, emails and phone conference appointments obtained through a public records request show that while medical examiners all across Florida had already released details about deaths in their counties, attorneys in Miami-Dade fought against having to provide that information to the Herald.
On April 2, Christine Lamia, deputy general counsel for the health department, told Assistant Miami-Dade County Attorney Christopher Angell that the info was confidential and should not be made public.
“As we discussed, it is the Department of Health’s position that the information requested in the request below should not be released as it is confidential and exempt from public record disclosure,” she said.
In recent weeks, Florida’s Agency for Health Care Administration has refused to reveal the nursing homes experiencing coronavirus outbreaks, even as the number of cases in longterm care facilities has surpassed 1,300, according to the publication.
Up until last Wednesday, the Department of Corrections had failed to acknowledge two inmate deaths due to COVID-19 at a privately run prison. The Department of Health had also been unwilling to disclose the extent of a backlog of unresolved coronavirus tests at private labs.
While the Miami Herald admits that the lack of detail has appeared unintentional in some cases, it highlights an overall issue with how the DeSantis administration is often unwilling or unable to provide crucial information about its coronavirus response. Even seemingly going so far at times to actively try to shield critical details about the depths of the crisis from becoming public.
Governor DeSantis revealed on Wednesday that he, himself, had been unable to obtain information about how many people have received unemployment checks from the Department of Economic Opportunity. (Although his office claims to have paid around 33,000, with the state reporting more than 800,000 claims backlogged on Thursday).
DeSantis also pushed back against criticisms of the state’s transparency. Following a Miami Herald article earlier this week that noted the state had not been transparent about the backlog of pending results from private labs, the Governor said Florida is arguably providing more information than any other state.
“Generally, Florida’s data and website, there’s more data put out on a daily basis by Florida’s Department of Health than anywhere,” DeSantis said during a Monday press conference.
