States accused of fudging or bungling COVID-19 testing data

As large parts of the US ease their lockdowns against the coronavirus, public health officials in some states are being accused of bungling infection statistics or even deliberately using a little sleight of hand to make things look better than they are.

The result is that politicians, business owners and ordinary Americans who are making decisions about reopenings and other day-to-day matters risk being left with the impression that the virus is under more control than it actually is.

In Virginia, Texas and Vermont, for example, officials said they have been combining the results of viral tests, which show an active infection, with antibody tests, which show a past infection. Public health experts say that can make for impressive-looking testing totals but does not give a true picture of how the virus is spreading.

In Florida, the data scientist who developed the state's coronavirus dashboard, Rebekah Jones, said this week that she was fired for refusing to manipulate data to drum up support for the plan to reopen. Calls to health officials for comment were not immediately returned Tuesday.

In Georgia, one of the earliest states to ease up on lockdowns and assure the public it was safe to go out again, the Department of Public Health published a graph around May 11 that purportedly showed new COVID-19 cases declining over time in the most severely affected counties. The entries, however, were not arranged in chronological order but in descending order.

Georgia state Rep. Jasmine Clark, a Democrat with a doctorate in microbiology, called the graph a prime example of malfeasance," adding: Science matters, and data manipulation is not only dangerous, but leads to distrust in our institutions."
Still, health officials in Virginia, where Democratic Gov. Ralph Northam has eased up on restrictions, said that combining the numbers caused no difference in overall trends."