Florida officials are no longer publishing the state's coronavirus death data

• The Florida Department of Health has withheld the state's coronavirus death data for more than a week, according to the Tampa Bay Times.
• The health department is also preventing Florida's medical examiners from publishing the state's death tally on their own after a discrepancy was found between their count and the department's official count.
• State officials instructed Dr. Stephen Nelson, chairman of the state Medical Examiners Commission, to remove the cause of death and the case descriptions from the medical examiners' death toll.
• Last month, attorneys for the state health department unsuccessfully sought to withhold Miami-Dade County medical examiner's death-toll figures.
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Florida's Department of Health has stopped publishing the state's coronavirus death toll data after medical examiners found that their count was around 10% higher than the state's official tally, according to the Tampa Bay Times.

The health department has withheld the medical examiner data for more than a week, according to the Times.

The health department told the Times it wanted to revise the data following the discrepancy with medical examiner figures, but did not provide details on "what they plan to remove." A representative for Florida's state health department didn't immediately respond to Business Insider's request for comment.

Dr. Stephen Nelson, head of Florida's Medical Examiners Commission, told the Times that state officials instructed him to strike the cause of death and the case descriptions from the medical examiner's tally — even though such information has always been public record.

Without such information, the medical examiner's death toll cannot reflect the actual number of deaths from the coronavirus, Nelson said.

"This is no different than any other public record we deal with," Nelson told the Times. "It's paid for by taxpayer dollars and the taxpayers have a right to know."

Some local medical examiner offices have continued to release their own tallies, according to the Times.

The state health department was recently in talks with the Florida Department of Law Enforcement about "privacy concerns for the individuals that passed away related to COVID-19," a health department spokesperson told the Times. Unlike the health department's count, the medical examiners' tally does not include names.

This may be the first time Florida officials have successfully withheld the coronavirus death tally, but it is not their first attempt to do so.

Last month, attorneys for the state health department tried to prevent the Miami-Dade County Medical Examiner's Office from providing death toll data to the Miami Herald, the Herald reported.

Public records obtained by the Herald found that Christine Lamia, deputy general counsel for the health department, told Miami-Dade County Assistant Attorney Christopher Angell that the data should be withheld.

"As we discussed, it is the Department of Health's position that the information requested in the request below should not be released as it is confidential and exempt from public record disclosure," Lamia said in an email to Angell on April 2.

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