TAMPA, Fla. — With Florida schools set to open in a little more than two weeks, COVID-19 and its variants are on the rise in Florida and across the nation. The numbers show a pandemic that is far from subsiding and without major changes, could be around for a long time.
Last Friday, the White House’s COVID-19 team called out the state of Florida for its rapid growth in COVID-19 infections. The White House said one in five of all new COVID-19 cases in the nation were in the Sunshine State.
A few hours after the White House pointed the spotlight at Florida’s growing COVID-19 problem, the state reported its own COVID-19 data for the week. And those numbers reflected a similar situation to what the White House outlined. Overall, the new case count jumped 93 percent from the week ending July 2 to the week ending July 15.
The state of Florida reported a new case positivity rate of 17 percent for the week ending July 16 while adding 45,604 cases to the more than 2.4 million cases the state has seen since the pandemic began. The weekly numbers for July 15 were almost as many as all of June (45,604 vs. 50,095 cumulative cases in July).
Cumulative Cases:
(Week ending – case count)
- 6/4 – 11,436
- 6/11 – 10,459
- 6/18 – 11,800
- 6/25 – 15,998
- 7/2 – 23,562
- 7/9 – 45,603
- 7/16 – 45,604
Turning to positivity rates over the past 10 weeks, the state had seen a steady decline in positivity rate since the week of May 7 bottoming out at 3.3 percent for the week of 6/11. However, since that week in June, the positivity rate has been growing hitting double-digits for the week of 7/9 and then pushed to 17 percent last week. Overall, the positivity rate jumped five and a half percent over the last week.
New Case Positivity Rate:
(Week ending - Rate)
- 6/4 – 3.5%
- 6/11 – 3.3%
- 6/18 – 3.8%
- 6/25 – 5.2%
- 7/2 – 7.8%
- 7/9 – 11.5%
- 7/16 – 17.0%
At the same time the case count and positivity rate were climbing, the pace of vaccinations was dropping across the state. For the week of 6/4, the state reported 485,512 vaccinations. However, since then, vaccinations have dropped each week culminating in a reported 224,326 vaccinations for the week ending July 9.
Doses administered:
(Week – Dosage count)
- 6/4 – 485,512
- 6/11 – 415,654
- 6/18 – 318,189
- 6/25 – 283,628
- 7/2 – 236,506
- 7/9 – 224,326
Deeper in the numbers, they revealed that no age group under 40 years old has reached 50 percent of the population getting vaccinated. The overall vaccination rate for people age 40-49 was 56 percent, while those aged 50-59 was 65 percent, 60-64 was at 74% vaccinated, and 65+ stood at 84 percent vaccinated, the highest of any age group in the state.
Vaccine Rates by age group:
(Age - % Vaccinated)
12-19: 33%
20-29: 38%
30-39: 46%
40-49: 56%
50-59: 65%
60-64: 74%
65+: 84%
Numbers from the Mayo Clinic paint an increasingly tough picture for Florida. As of Monday, the Mayo Clinic reported the average number of daily cases per 100,000 people in Florida stood at 33. Projecting out to July 31, just 12 days away, the Mayo Clinic model forecasts the average daily cases in Florida to skyrocket to a median forecast of 86 with an upper bound of 149 and a lower bound of 58.
Combining it all with two weeks to go before school starts back across the state will cause problems for schools, parents, and everyone in the state.