Red flag laws explained: Which states have them and what do they do? His response also noted that “most data quality issues the Department experienced during the COVID-19 pandemic originated from laboratories that submitted inaccurate or incomplete data” to FDOH. “If COVID-19 testing was not performed, occurred more than 30 days before the death, was not reported to the Department, or could not be matched to a Vital Statistics record because of data quality deficiencies, the death would not be counted as a COVDI-19 associated surveillance death included in the Department’s COVID-19 surveillance reports,” Ladapo wrote in response to the auditor general. Joseph Ladapo wrote that the department agreed with the findings and a corrective action plan was put in place and is currently in progress, but noted that some discrepancies were to be expected. In response to the audit report, State Surgeon General Dr. When asked about contact tracing follow-ups, and incomplete contact methods for doing so, the FDOH told the auditor general that “inaccurate contact information and the refusal of some individuals to speak with the department hindered” its “ability to contact all COVID-19 positive individuals.”įDOH also told the auditor general that, as COVID cases spiked, data quality issues and discrepancies occurred. When the audit was in progress, the auditor general said “Department management indicated that, if the Department did not receive a positive lab result or if the name and demographics listed on the laboratory report differed from the death certificate, the Department may not have been able to match the record with enough confidence to definitively say that the individual who passed away was the same individual listed on the COVID-19 test result.” “Absent complete and accurate information related to the extent and severity of the COVID-19 pandemic, government officials and the general public may not have had all the information necessary to assess the efficacy of COVID-19 control measures and take appropriate actions,” the auditor report read. Others had no record of a testing positive for COVID-19 in Merlin, despite having it reported in the state’s Vital Statistics records. The health department told the auditor general that some cases did not include lab results with COVID-19 either.Īdditionally, some of the individuals who were recorded as having COVID-19 for a contributing cause of death did not have their records reported in the Merlin system used by FDOH. Lack of match-up was among the reasons some deaths were not included in the data published by FDOH. “As subsequently described, the number of entities reporting data, apparent inaccurate or incomplete data reported to the State by those entities, and the lack of effective access controls in the systems used to gather data, impacted the State’s ability to accurately report COVID-19 data at the beginning of the pandemic.” “To evaluate the State’s readiness to provide essential information needed to respond to the global pandemic, this operational audit focused on COVID-19 data collection and reporting processes at the Agency for Health Care Administration (Agency), Department of Health (Department), and Division of Emergency Management (Division) during the period March 1, 2020, through October 9, 2020,” the report said. Now, the state’s Auditor General has found the case and death data for COVID-19 from FDOH was inaccurate, to some extents. The findings concerning Jones’ whistleblower allegations, that FDOH was directed to falsify positivity rates, that new case data on positivity was misrepresented, and that Jones was directed to restrict access to underlying data, were all reported false in the OIG report. The report from the FDOH OIG found the claims by Jones were “unsubstantiated” and “unfounded.” COVID-19 may affect babies’ brain development in womb, study says
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