One day before a top Florida Department of Health data manager was taken off her role maintaining the state’s COVID-19 dashboard, officials had directed her to remove data from public view that showed Floridians reported symptoms of the disease before cases were officially announced, according to internal emails obtained by the Tampa Bay Times.
According to the emails, department staff gave the order shortly after reporters requested the same data from the agency on May 5. The data manager, Rebekah Jones, complied with the order, but not before she told her supervisors it was the “wrong call.”
By the next morning, control over the data was given to other employees, according to an email Jones posted Friday on a public listserv. Jones, the department’s Geographic Information Systems manager, wrote that she was no longer the point person for questions about the department’s “Florida’s COVID-19 Data and Surveillance Dashboard.” She implied her removal was an act of retribution.
Jones did not respond to requests for comment.
The dashboard, which gives daily updates on numbers of deaths, cases and tests for the coronavirus in every county in the state, is relied upon by officials, journalists, academics and residents who want as much information as possible about the deadly pandemic.
Besides the visible dashboard, the department releases the same data, with only slightly more information, in daily reports, as well as in another format that allows for easier data analysis.
In her Friday email to subscribers of a “COVID data users” listserv, Jones said she was reassigned on May 5 “(f)or reasons beyond my division’s control” and warned that the staff taking over may be less straightforward.
“As a word of caution, I would not expect the new team to continue the same level of accessibility and transparency that I made central to the process during the first two months. After all, my commitment to both is largely (arguably entirely) the reason I am no longer managing it,” she wrote.
“They are making a lot of changes. I would advise being diligent in your respective uses of this data.”
