On May 24, the Florida Department of Health (FDOH) fired its then geographic information systems manager, Rebekah Jones, after allegedly refusing to comply with the government agency's order to manipulate the COVID-19 data. Now, she is reportedly having the statistics published on her own.

The tension went on for days between Rebekah Jones and the department's supervisors after the former alleged that the officials had permanently pulled her off the COVID-19 dashboard, which she ran for several weeks.

The Washington Post reported that the health department's manager had wanted Jones "to make certain changes" to the dashboard, which the public can view. She said, FDOH asked her to resign, but she declined.

Weeks after the department fired her; Jones has now discovered how to show the COVID-19 data of the state exactly how she wants it. Specifically, the ex-FDOH developed her dashboard.

COVID-19 Statistics Inaccurate

30-year-old Jones said she wanted to develop an application that would deliver data and help people go through the COVID-19 test, not to mention, help them "get resources they need from their community." That, she continued, is "what she ended up building" with the said new dashboard.

Earlier on, Deborah Birx, the White House COVID-19 response coordinator, praised the official COVID-19 dashboard a month before FDOH's reported firing of Jones, describing it "as a beacon of transparency."

Nevertheless, Jones has affirmed that the official dashboard undercounted the total of contagion of the state, and "overcounted" the total number of people who went through COVID-19 test, with the official figures, she said, that strengthened the decision to begin relaxing restrictions on the economy early last month when Florida had not met federal rulings for reopening.

Jones's Dashboard

On the dashboard Jones developed, the number of people tested with the virus is considerably lower than the official figure. She said the number of the state is a count of the "number of samples taken," instead of the number of tests done.

In addition, Jones's dashboard indicated that the state "had tested 895,047 people as of Friday evening." The FDOH dashboard, on the other hand, stated that over 1.3 million people had been tested already.

For the death tool, the ex-FDOH scientist's dashboard showed a slightly higher count as she said she is counting nonresidents who died while they were in the state, while the department does not count.

The case count on the COVID-19 dashboard of this fired FDOH scientist is higher since it includes those who have tested positive for proteins or antibodies, specifying that the infection is in a person's body.

However, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention or CDC has already cautioned that antibody tests are not a guarantee that there is a higher percentage that positive results may be incorrect in locations where only a few people have had the infection.

For Jones, the discrepancies from the COVID-19 data site were essential. Also, she said she's planning to keep her dashboard running from her Tallahassee-based home, for as long as it appears to be helpful and useful for Florida residents and for as long as she can afford to do so, too.

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