Exposed

Houston Chronicle
09/29/2020

In the Chronicle’s investigative series called Exposed, reporters examined thousands of pages of emails, reports and other documents obtained under the state’s public records laws, and interviewed more than 100 people to piece together the behind-the-scenes struggle to contain the spread of COVID-19. Houston officials had kept the city’s biggest event of the year, the Houston Livestock and Rodeo Show, open for days as the pandemic spread, waiting for the first confirmed case of community spread. The first story revealed that nearly three dozen local COVID patients said their symptoms preceded the Houston region’s first confirmed case. That story demonstrated how a cascade of failures, including testing shortages in the first critical days, allowed the virus to spread unchecked. For the second story, reporters explored why Texas wasn’t better prepared for the pandemic, despite years of warning and pledges to improve planning. Reporters reviewed thousands of pages of purchase orders for personal protective equipment, finding the lack of supplies endangered health care workers and cost taxpayers up to $1.5 billion. The third story in the series was only possible because of the team’s efforts to independently monitor the outbreak from the beginning. The reporting showed state officials failed to provide accurate, timely information on the true death toll of the disease. The newspaper discovered that officials used flawed data to guide their decision-making and inform the public. Texas politicians boasted about Texas’ artificially low death rate compared to New York, when in fact Texas was undercounting fatalities by thousands of cases.

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Submitted by Elizabeth Pudwill.