CDC adjusts Florida COVID-19 numbers after health department call-out

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on Tuesday updated its COVID-1 tracker for Florida over the past few days after the state’s department of health appealed publically for an update. 

The CDC told Fox News in an email on Tuesday that it was working with the state’s health department to correct the information. 

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The state took to Twitter on Monday to ask the CDC to update its COVID-19 case tracker because it incorrectly combined “MULTIPLE days into one.” The Sunday total was the state’s worst ever, according to the CDC data.

Multiple media organizations picked up on the number and the department corrected the stories online with some bite.

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“Wrong again. The number of cases @CDCgov released for Florida today is incorrect,” it responded to a report in the South Florida Sun-Sentinel. “They combined MULTIPLE days into one. We anticipate CDC will correct the record.”

The CDC initially reported 28,317 new cases on Sunday but adjusted that number to 19,584 by Tuesday. The health department said there were 15,319 cases on Sunday. The CDC and the state did not immediately respond to an after-hours email from Fox News about the discrepancy. 

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On Tuesday, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported the state has surpassed 20,000 for its 7-day average of new cases, a day after the federal agency misreported numbers given by the Florida Department of Health by combining data from the last three days into two.

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Hospitalizations rose by more than 1,100 on Tuesday to 14,787 patients with COVID-19, according to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. More than 47% of ICU beds were taken by about 3,000 coronavirus patients. That number has nearly tripled in the last three weeks.

At no other time during the pandemic have intensive care units seen a percentage of COVID patients as high as in the last two days.

The Associated Press contributed to this report