Governor Murphy accused of using old COVID-19 data again to pump up numbers in daily briefing

Shore News Network

TRENTON, NJ – New Jersey Governor Phil Murphy was called out on Monday for once again inflating COVID-19 stats, using data that could be days, weeks or even months old in his daily COVID-19 count. Some say the governor is intentionally inflating the numbers to continue his authoritarian control of the state under the guise of a health emergency.

Adam Zdan of News 12 New Jersey called the governor out on it.

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“When you make your announcement about the daily positive test results in New Jersey, some of those test results are 48 hours old. Some of them are 48 weeks old. Why not separate the test that have come back positive from, say, before last week from the larger total?” Zdan asked the governor.


“I think the positives as I – again, it’s possible I’m not understanding you, but the positives that we announce are positives from a day that we refer back to when the – when I refer to the positivity rate, so that refers to the recent,” Murphy stumbled on the answer.


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“Dr. Tan and I talked about this maybe a month or two months ago and she says that taking these positive results from last July or last March are necessary to gauge the epi-curve. That’s the way she put it, and that’s perfectly understandable For the residents of the state to figure out exactly how many people tested positive on Thursday, why not separate the older tests from the newer positive tests?” Zdan fired back.

“Yeah, again, it’s possibly me, but the tests that I announce, that we announce that we put up on the slides are in the here and now. I’m sure Dr. Tan, who’s forgot more about this than I know, as if I have to say that – I’m sure there’s also a reason why you’re reflecting forward and backwards to get the epidemiological curves,” Murphy responded.

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After a brief back and forth, Murphy conceded that old data is often included in the numbers.

The New Jersey COVID-19 dashboard includes a disclaimer that daily figures may report cases that were tested prior to the 24 hour period but not reported. Murphy said that those cases represent less than 3% of the daily case load.

Judith Persichilli did not respond to the question, instead spoke in general of the recent increase of COVID-19 in the community.

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