As the Delta wave surged across the nation this year, state officials in Florida withheld daily COVID data from the public, leaving many Floridians in the dark about how many people in their neighborhoods were dying, the Tampa Bay Times reports. Between June 4 and Sept. 17, officials opted for weekly updates only, stopped reporting deaths per county, and started withholding data that was previously public. If people wanted to see how many people had died in their county, the Florida Department of Health directed them to the CDC... which relied on Florida’s online COVID data that was taken down by state officials in June. A Florida DOH spokesperson said that the agency’s 12,000 experts were better equipped “to make decisions regarding the best and most understood data.” Critics countered that a government agency determining what information to share is “contrary to the idea of transparency in government.”