Surge could continue for weeks, experts say

Florida is in its darkest hours of coronavirus spread, as the winter’s surge of infections is not projected to let up for weeks — if not longer, health experts say.

The peak of the pandemic is likely to surpass the state’s one- day record of 17,783 new COVID- 19 cases reported on Wednesday, according to infectious disease specialists who have analyzed the data.

So while Florida can’t get vaccines distributed to vulnerable residents fast enough, we haven’t even seen the expected spike of infections from gatherings to celebrate the arrival of the new year.

“It’s going to get worse before it gets better,” said Dr. Marissa J. Levine, director of the University of South Florida’s Center for Leadership in Public Health Practice. “We haven’t even seen the New Year’s Eve impact on top of the current surge, so I think all bets are off that this is going to end quickly. This will be a number of weeks, maybe a couple of months.”

She blamed the dismal outlook on a lack of restrict i ons i mposed by t he government, lagging efforts by people to practice social distancing and other safety measures, and the expected spread of a more contagious form of the virus.

“All of that does not bode well,” she said, predicting a rise in hospitalizations and deaths. “If people are taking the arrival of vaccine as an opportunity to lower their guard, then things could definitely get much worse.”

Florida is expected to at least maintain the same level of cases, if not exceed it, over the next four weeks, according to the COVID19 ForecastHub, a website that collects prediction models from more than two dozen sources and builds an ensemble forecast.

The latest projection released Tuesday shows that Florida should end this week with 91,137 new cases, up from 90,245 new cases last week.

Then, Forecast Hub predicts an average of about 90,000 new cases for each of the next three weeks, with a potential for the figures to drop as low as 53,000 and go as high as 146,000 weekly cases in the state. This is a calculation based on 28 different models.

“Way too many people in really stupid ways got together over the holidays and it takes about two to three weeks to get to the peak from that event,” said Dr. Aileen Marty, professor of infectious diseases at Florida International University in Miami.

She says the current surge is worse than the period of previous record highs for cases that were recorded last July.

“It’s bad and it ’s going to keep getting worse for at least another week or so,” she said, adding that an additional concern is the expected spread of the more transmissible COVID19 variant that originated in the United Kingdom.

On Wednesday, Florida topped 1.4 million infections since the beginning of the pandemic last March. That’s the third- highest total for states, behind the more populated Texas and California.

One bright spot, if it can be called that, is that Florida’s rate of infections, on a per- capita basis, is close to the middle of states, according to the U. S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Florida is 28th on the list, which is led by North Dakota.

But recent trends are concerning. The number of new COVID cases per day in Florida has increased 79.9% over the past week ( 16,808) compared with 30 days earlier ( 9,345.)

The state on Wednesday also reported another 129 resident deaths linked to COVID- 19, with a pandemic total of 22,317 fatalities.

And state data shows about 7,300 people hospitalized in Florida with a primary diagnosis of COVID- 19, the most since Aug. 6.

As infections rise, more sickness and death will unquestionably follow.

“We don’t have that critical mass of immunity whether it ’s people who got the virus on their own or a vaccine,” said Cindy Prins, associate professor of epidemiology at the University of Florida. “So we’ve got so many people that it can still be transmitted to. We’re not as bad as some places where they don’t have ICU capacity, but my worry is, are we going to get to that point?”

As she watches the rise of new cases, she wonders when the state will get over the hump.

“My hope,” said Prins, “is that we may start to see this level off within about three weeks or so, maybe by the end of January.”