For the first time in seven months, Florida officials on Saturday did not release the number of confirmed cases or deaths from COVID-19.
Officials blame an influx of test results Florida received from a private laboratory that is not affiliated with the state, according to a statement from Fred Piccolo, a spokesman for Gov. Ron DeSantis.
The state’s daily update had been released consistently since the onset of the pandemic in Florida. It included case numbers, death totals and hospitalizations for all 67 counties. The daily report will begin again on Sunday, according to Piccolo, and will also include data that was originally supposed to be released Saturday.
Piccolo said that Florida’s Department of Health needs to “de-duplicate” around 400,000 previously-reported COVID-19 test results from Helix Laboratory. The “massive” amount of data from the laboratory prevented Florida’s automatic reporting system from