COVID cases up, but previous surges were worse

Florida saw an increase of COVID-19 cases and hospitalizations leading into the holidays, and while hospitals say it isn’t as bad as previous surges, some counties, including Miami-Dade, are once again considered to be high risk for the disease.

This is according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which uses data on hospitalizations and cases to determine whether a county has a low, medium or high risk of COVID transmission. The agency uses this risk level to give guidance on whether people should wear a mask or not.

As of Friday, 15 of Florida’s 67 counties, including Miami-Dade, are considered high risk. The CDC says 46 Florida counties, including Broward, Monroe, Palm Beach and Manatee, are medium risk and eight counties are low risk.

What does this say about the COVID situation in Florida?

Depending on the risk level of your county, the mask guidance varies:

If you live in a highrisk county like MiamiDade, the CDC is recommending you wear a highquality mask or respirator. The public health agency is also recommending people considered to be “at risk” for getting very

Asick avoid non-essential indoor activities in public.

If you live in a medium-risk county like Broward, Monroe, Manatee and Palm Beach, the CDC is recommending anyone considered to be high risk of severe illness wear a high-quality mask or respirator when indoors in public.

The CDC is also recommending people stay upto-date with their COVID vaccination, including the bivalent booster, regardless

Aof what risk level their county is in. To check your county’s risk level, visit cdc.gov/coronavirus/ 2019-ncov/your-health/ covid-by-county.html

Cases, hospitalizations and deaths have been some of the key indicators that officials have used to gauge the COVID-19 situation in Florida and the rest of the United States, though they do have some limitations.

Case counts, for example, can help give people a sense of how much the virus is spreading, though the figure is likely an undercount because it doesn’t include positive results from at-home testing.

This is why experts like Jason Salemi, a University of South Florida epidemiologist, also look at wastewater data, which can help indicate how much virus spread there is in a community. And