Drew Brees is 'part of the problem

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Karen Landers, a media representative for the Alabama Department of Public Health, said her agency “has not been contacted by CDC regarding these counties and cannot verify the data” in the document identifying Lowndes and Bullock counties as areas of concern. Landers added that the health department was “aware of increases in cases in a number of counties in Alabama and is taking mitigation strategies. ”

Also unclear is how the data is collected and how rigorously it is checked with states. “The CDC website numbers have been reviewed and approved by states, ” the internal May 27 document says.

The listing comes amid what appears to be an internal government debate about how to calculate what counties are hot spots, a designation that has been used at times by officials to describe certain areas of the country with a concerning number of coronavirus cases. There is no hard-and-fast hot spot or area-of-concern designation. A May 28 internal document produced by the Department of Homeland Security and reviewed by Yahoo News says the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s “Data and Analysis Operational Task Force is analyzing county hot spot watchlists with three different sources and methodologies to assist White House Task Force efforts to select a single method for calculating hot spots. ”

FEMA told Yahoo News that “each approach uses different combinations of total
and new case information to determine which areas may have increasing activity. The assessment of multiple approaches helps identify the strengths of each. ” A spokesperson for the agency would not divulge specifics of those approaches.