Several states scaled back their reporting of COVID-19 statistics this month just as cases across the country started to skyrocket, depriving the public of real-time information on outbreaks, cases, hospitalizations, and deaths in their communities.
Florida, Nebraska, Iowa, and South Dakota have shifted from reporting coronavirus statistics daily to reporting them on a weekly basis, often waiting until the weekend to release the numbers.
Americans have come to depend on their state’s dashboards in tracking cases in their communities, as well as the trends in order to navigate a crisis that has killed more than 600,000 people in the U.S.
According to US News, Nebraska actually stopped reporting on the virus altogether for two weeks after Governor Pete Ricketts declared an end to the official virus emergency. This move forced news reporters to file public records requests or turn to national websites that track state data to learn about COVID statistics.
The state backtracked two weeks later and came up with a weekly site that provides some basic numbers. The Nebraska Department of Health and Human Services website says COVID-19 metrics will be reported by DHHS every Wednesday unless stated otherwise.
Earlier this month, health officials in Florida changed their frequency in reporting cases, saying it made sense – given the decreasing number of cases and the increasing number of people being vaccinated, according to AOL News.
Florida is confronting a COVID-19 spike. More than 73,000 new cases were reported this week, WFLA reported. The state now accounts for nearly a quarter of all new coronavirus cases reported in the US.
It is hard telling who health officials were listening to when they decided coronavirus cases were dropping and vaccinations were picking up. But, the state has a coronavirus testing positivity rate of 10.31 percent according to Johns Hopkins Data.
Why is accurate reporting of coronavirus statistics important?
Yes, maintaining daily updates on the virus does require significant resources for states. This is why Kansas went to reporting virus numbers three times a week in May because the state health department said providing daily statistics consumed too much time for its already overwhelmed staff, reports the Associated Press.
However, going as far as Nebraska did, saying the emergency was over actually gives people a false sense of their own safety.
“The main problem is that it reflects a disinterest in pandemic risk management,” said Brett-Major, with the University of Nebraska Medical Center in Omaha.
“We know that showing the data to others actually is important because the actions that businesses take, the actions that schools take, the actions that civic leaders take, the actions that community leaders take, the actions that each of us individually takes are all influenced by our perception of what the risk is out there,” said Dr. Kirsten Bibbins-Domingo, who leads the department of epidemiology and biostatistics at the University of California, San Francisco.