COVID-19 Positive Testing Rate
(Week Ending August 12, 2021)
The early state guidance set a positive testing rate below 10% as the benchmark for reopening, such as schools, and the CDC guidance suggested a 5% positive testing rate as the threshold. With the county at almost 29%, I guess we shouldn’t be surprised that positive student cases have tripled from the week of August 9 when school opened until the week of August 16. Likely the more infectious Delta variant has caused the growth of new cases by 60% over the highest levels of case growth in Tampa Bay previously.
Case Growth
(Week Ending August 12, 2021 versus March 2020-June 2021 Peak)
In spite of what you may read on social media, from the experience that has been gained from administering 4,857,394,557 vaccine doses (yes, over 4 Billion doses) across the world we know that the benefits of the vaccine outweigh the risks. So how are we doing on vaccinations, consider coronavirus vaccination status. But we are at the point where people affected are beginning to beat the drum for everyone to be vaccinated. The unbelievable patient loads hospitals are carrying, the exhaustion of healthcare staff both physical and mental, the patients suffering in hallway beds, the patients whose care has to be deferred because of reallocating staff to other units are devastating the healthcare system
CSSE is reporting 37,382,224 positive cases in the U.S. and 625,894 deaths. FDOH has changed its reporting of data from daily to weekly. DOH reported for the week ending August 19, 3,027,954 confirmed cases in Florida, with 42,252 deaths.
