Florida Stops Releasing Daily COVID-19 Case And Death Reports

June 5, 2021

The Florida Department of Health has ended daily COVID-19 reports that were used by the public and media to track the number of cases and deaths in the state. And as a result, our daily reports on NorthEscambia.com have also come to an end.

We’ve published the reports daily since March 2020. As cases declined, so did the number of people reading our reports. But in the interest of public service, we continued daily publication because thousands of people tracked our reporting to see changes and trends in their local community.

The Florida Department of Health plans to publish a weekly update on cases and vaccines. It remains to be seen how detailed that report will be and if we will be able to provide updates on cases at the local community level for places like Pensacola, Cantonment, Molino, Century and Walnut Hill.

NorthEscambia.com will evaluate the new reporting format and determine if we will publish weekly updates. Rest assured, however, that we will update you if there’s any major local trend change reported by the state.

Gov. Ron DeSantis’ press secretary, Christina Pushaw, told The News Service of Florida on Friday that there is no need to keep issuing the daily reports.

“Covid-19 cases have significantly decreased over the past year as we have a less than 5 percent positivity rate, and our state is returning to normal, with vaccines widely available throughout Florida,” Pushaw said in an email.

In the last week, Escambia County recorded 60 new COVID-19 cases and six deaths.

Comments

7 Responses to “Florida Stops Releasing Daily COVID-19 Case And Death Reports”

  1. Jill on June 8th, 2021 6:52 am

    Amen! That’s all I got. Thanks for letting me share.

  2. Susan on June 5th, 2021 9:17 pm

    Well, big surprise…..DeSantis and accurate reporting haven’t really been honest since the beginning of the Covid outbreak so…
    Remember 3 weeks into the school year and suddenly the health department numbers for the school district just went silent? That was the sign of things to come.

  3. Julia Pearsall on June 5th, 2021 1:43 pm

    I checked out the new stats this morning and found them totally unacceptable. Only weekly updates and no death stats by county. Sent an email to express my dissatisfaction! Since testing is down, death stats at least give a lagging indicator of new infections. It will be difficult to track actual infections and rates of infection.

  4. S on June 5th, 2021 12:49 pm

    Thank you so much for publishing these numbers all this time. I hate to see the state health department ending the reports. I hope I’m wrong but I don’t think this pandemic is going to be over yet for a while. I worry about there still being so many unvaccinated with the Delta variant looking to be even more contagious than the Alpha variant which was already more contagious.

  5. Thankful for you William on June 5th, 2021 9:42 am

    THANK YOU for your daily reports. I have read it every single day and kept a running account of the trends. If you can include numbers for the 32565 zip code in your weekly reports, it would be much appreciated. Looking at the state numbers for the past week, by my very unofficial count is 9,500 new cases and 242 deaths. I don’t consider that “gone away”. That is a LOT of people still being affected. If someone DeSantis cared about was one of those numbers… Maybe the state feels the need to hide something they think is coming…

  6. me on June 5th, 2021 6:33 am

    Sorry to hear this! THANK YOU William for your daily reporting!! Read it everyday…
    Your format was SO MUCH BETTER and easier to read than the one I was receiving from the county. It was nice knowing how our county was doing with this pandemic. I know it is better, but it is still here & we still have to be cautious.

  7. Lorene on June 5th, 2021 5:20 am

    Thank you NorthEscambia.com for providing daily COVID stats for Escambia and Santa Rosa counties and the state of Florida.
    May God Bless Florida and America.