Misleading COVID-19 map from CDC left out data for Florida, changed overnight

A widely shared but misleading federal map that drew national attention for painting a sunny picture of COVID-19 in Florida was finally updated — demonstrating how incomplete the data behind the map has been for days.

The map, published by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, had presented Florida as the only state in the U.S. with low transmission levels. People shared the map in dozens of posts on social media — presenting it as proof of how safe Florida is compared to the rest of the nation. The map also was included in an article about COVID cases bottoming out in Florida, which was shared in a Twitter post by Gov. Ron DeSantis’ press secretary.

Then in one sudden swoop Thursday, the updated information recast the map, shifting nearly all of Florida’s counties from the “low transmission level” category to moderate or even substantial levels.

On Wednesday, the South Florida Sun Sentinel first reported that Florida’s community transmission levels by county had not been updated since Thanksgiving, skewing the state’s 7-day average downward and giving the appearance Florida was the safest state in the nation.

Florida’s community transmission data updates weekly on Thursday on the CDC map. A spokesperson for the CDC told the Sun Sentinel that Florida did not report its case numbers on Thanksgiving, causing a one-week lag that distorted the map.

While the situation isn’t as rosy as depicted, Florida is doing relatively well when it comes to the pandemic.

The CDC’s numbers provided by the Florida Department of Health for Dec. 1 do show Florida as having the lowest per-capita rate of new COVID cases and among the lowest test positivity rates in the country.

After a difficult summer, Florida has emerged from the delta wave that is now hitting states in most other parts of the U.S.

Yet, the virus is still circulating at higher levels in parts of the state.

For example, the federal map shows the South Florida counties — Miami-Dade, Broward and Palm Beach — fall into a category called “substantial transmission” for having a 7-day average of 50 to 85 COVID cases per 100,000 people.

Many of the Central Florida counties also have substantial transmission levels.

Public health experts say the delta wave’s progression is part of a pattern.

“The delta wave is like the wind. It came from the south, hit Florida, and now it’s hitting other states to the north and eventually their case levels will come down, too,” said Dr. Ali Mokdad with the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME) at the University of Washington, who works on global COVID-19 data predictions. “What we are looking at in Florida is not a success story. It’s a failure. We saw a lot of mortality. The fact that it hit Florida earlier and is now coming down is because it ran out of people to infect.”

Overall, 3.68 million people in Florida have had COVID during the pandemic.