Lee Health CEO says system glitch resolved after COVID-19 data failed to go to FDOH

Lee Health confirms Friday it under reported numbers for coronavirus data after a system failure between it and Florida Department of Health in Lee County this week. This means there will be a spike in numbers reported for COVID-19 cases and deaths in Lee County.

Lee Health does in-house testing for the coronavirus.

“All test results are sent to the Florida Department of Health in Lee County,” said Dr. Larry Antonucci, the Lee Health CEO. “The data is then reviewed and validated in Tallahassee and reported at the state level.”

But Antonucci said that something went wrong with the transfer of data this week during his conference call with reporters.

“What we discovered in the past few days is some labs results transferred from Lee Health were not received by the DOH,” Antonucci said. “So we’ve been working hard over the last few days to get the two IT systems to talk to each other and have resolved the issue.”

Now, that the system is fixed, Antonucci says it’s too late to go back and assign the cases and deaths to the right day. So Lee Health will add them to the statewide totals over the next couple of days.

Despite the problem, Antonucci said the numbers should be trusted. During the pandemic, Lee Health has been publicly reporting testing results in several forums, including during media briefings. All of those numbers have been accurate.

“I wanted to explain this situation so you are not surprised to see a sudden spike in test results,” Antonucci said.

Antonucci and Lee Health have not confirmed what caused the system glitch. And we are awaiting a response from the Lee Health CEO about how the recent numbers can be trusted amid the recent system failure.