Ron DeSantis Loses Fight to Limit COVID Data; COVID-19 is Now ‘a common respiratory illness,’ Arizona Health Officials Say, and other C-Virus related stories

Ron DeSantis Loses Fight to Limit COVID Data:

Florida Governor Ron DeSantis officially lost the fight to limit COVID data on Monday and will now be forced to release the data to the public.

Former State Representative Carlos Guillermo Smith first filed the lawsuit in 2021 against the Florida Department of Health and Florida Surgeon General Dr. Joseph Ladapo, after the department refused to continue to post data on COVID to their public dashboard under orders from DeSantis. Access to Covid-19 data was restricted after the Republican governor decided to open Florida for business in June 2021 just as the Delta variant spread throughout the state. During the information blackout, thousands of Floridians died from COVID-19 in the summer and early fall of 2021.

In a series of posts shared to X, formerly Twitter, Guillermo Smith stated the win while calling out DeSantis’ decision to restrict information in order to downplay the threat of COVID-19, stating the decision has cost many lives while alleging it also played into the governor’s political agenda.

“After a 2-year battle, the DeSantis administration has agreed to settle my public records lawsuit against them for illegally hiding COVID health data while the Delta variant ripped thru Florida killing 23,000 people. We persisted. We prevailed. We held them accountable,” Guillermo Smith wrote on X.

“The Department LIED about the existence of these public records in court + did everything to restrict information and downplay the threat of COVID in order to fit their political narrative. They did this during the deadliest wave of the pandemic—a decision that cost many lives,” Guillermo Smith added.

The settlement agreement requires the Department to provide detailed COVID-19 data for the next three years, including vaccination counts, case counts, and deaths, aggregated weekly, by county, age group, gender, and race.

While neither the Florida Department of Health nor Ladapo admit any fault, the state has also agreed to pay all legal fees in the case. —>READ MORE HERE

COVID-19 is now ‘a common respiratory illness,’ Arizona health officials say:

Arizona health officials this week scaled back the state’s COVID-19 dashboard and declared the disease “a common respiratory illness.”

Arizona’s dashboard will no longer include COVID-19 cases by ZIP code, vaccinations by ZIP code, or a tally of COVID-19 cases in congregate settings such as nursing homes and assisted living facilities. The updated dashboard also no longer includes a death tally that calculates deaths since the onset of the pandemic. Rather, it gives a tally of deaths per year, plus a three-year average and does the same for hospitalizations.

Starting Oct. 11, the state will be adding COVID-19 to its regular reporting by week on the prevalence of influenza and RSV, or respiratory syncytial virus.

The changes were expected and were among a series of pandemic-era practices that have either ended or been drastically reduced in scope. Officials with the Arizona Department of Health Services say they haven’t completed an Arizona COVID-19 report, but it’s something they are considering. Some public health experts say such a report could serve as a guide through any future pandemics that the state faces.

“I think all of us are burned out on COVID-19 to some extent, but it was such a unique time and the lessons learned I think were very important,” said Dr. Joe Gerald, an associate professor of health policy at the University of Arizona’s Mel & Enid Zuckerman College of Public Health. —>READ MORE HERE

Follow links below to relevant/related stories and resources:

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USA TODAY: Coronavirus Updates

WSJ: Coronavirus Live Updates

YAHOO NEWS: Coronavirus Live Updates

NEW YORK POST: Coronavirus The Latest

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