White House task force: Florida now in red zone for rate of cases
The rate of new COVID-19 cases in Florida has been increasing steadily week over week since early October, pushing the state into the red zone, according to the White House Coronavirus Task Force report for the fourth week of October.
The state ranks 31st in the nation for new COVID-19 cases per 100,000 people. It remained in the yellow zone for test positivity, indicating a rate between 5% and 8%, ranking 33rd in the nation.
There are “early signs of deterioration in the Sunbelt, including Florida, as mitigation efforts were decreased over the last month,” said the Oct. 25 report, obtained by the Orlando Sentinel from Gov. Ron DeSantis’ office.
“Florida should immediately expand mitigation in the counties with rising cases and any increase in daily hospitalizations,” said the report, recommending mask wearing, physical distancing, hand hygiene, avoiding crowds in public and social gatherings in private, and ensuring flu immunizations.
There was a slight increase in test positivity and no decline in week-over-week new hospital admissions, the report said.
“These, taken with the continued increase in percent of longterm care facilities with a positive staff member, suggest the early signals of expanding community spread that should be immediately addressed,” it said.
The White House task force, chaired by Vice President Mike Pence, has been sending state governors the weekly reports since June, but only a few have been making them public.
The reports show state- and county-level case and positivity rates, levels of testing and death rates. It ranks the counties by color codes, from green to red, indicating the rate of increase in cases and test positivity, and more significantly, it provides early warnings and a list of recommendations to each state.
The Sentinel first requested the weekly report on Oct. 16. The newspaper had to involve its attorneys to obtain the Oct. 11 report.
On Oct. 26, the newspaper requested reports for the weeks of Oct. 18 and Oct. 25 and received the documents a week later.
DeSantis’ office has not said why it’s not sharing the report with the public or why it has been subjecting the Sentinel’s requests
to the public records request process, which tend to delay a time-sensitive document.
It’s also not clear if his office shares the report with any other entity in the state, including counties, cities, hospitals or universities.
Alan Harris, chief administrator of Seminole County Office of Emergency Management, said he has asked for the report from DeSantis’ office, and they’ve refused to send it to him.
And Orange County’s emergency management team “has involved its Legislative Affairs Department in an attempt to get/ request this report,” according to a county spokeswoman.
During a regularly scheduled coronavirus press briefing on Monday, Mayor Jerry Demings said that the governor’s office has not sent his office the weekly reports.
“There certainly is data within
the reports that could be informative for those of us at the local level who have to make decisions, but we have to get those reports in a timely manner, and to date, that hasn’t been something that had been pushed out across the state of Florida,” Demings said.
Jennifer Lepard, chief administrative officer for Oklahoma State Department of Health, which is among the few states that posts the weekly reports online, said in an email that the department chose to share them publicly because they are “are an instrumental tool in helping educate the public on the number of cases and their impact, as well as the possible actions Oklahomans can take to protect themselves and others from further spread.”
Lepard added that the reports are useful to help provide a comparison to other states and “to learn about promising practices from outside experts.”
In Oklahoma, the recommendations outlined in the
report are briefed to the governor weekly via the Governor’s Coronavirus Solutions Task Force, Lepard said.
It’s not clear how DeSantis uses the reports.
The Oct. 25 report added a new bullet point about schools: “Ensure all K-12 schools are following CDC guidelines, including for mask usage, and are utilizing (antigen testing) to routinely test all teachers as another indicator of the degree of community spread to further increase mitigation efforts.”
It also continued to recommend mitigation efforts among university students “to prevent outbreaks on or off campus” and mask and physical distancing messaging for all residents, both in public and private spaces to prevent household spread.
The Oct. 25 report also showed the following.
■ Compared with the prior week, the rate of new COVID-19 cases per 100,000 population had increased by 20%. That rate increase was 14% in the Oct. 18 report and 8% in the Oct. 11 report.
■ Miami-Dade, Broward and Hillsborough counties continued to report the highest number of new cases in the prior three weeks, accounting for a third of the all new cases.
■ Orange County ranked fourth for the greatest number of new cases in the prior three weeks.
■ Between Oct. 12 and 18, 11% of nursing homes had at least one new resident COVID-19 case, 26% at least one new staff case and 4% had at least one new resident death.
■ Between Oct. 17 and Oct. 23, an average of 628 patients with confirmed or suspected COVID-19 were admitted to hospitals in Florida each day.
■ The report also includes the availability of personal protective equipment in hospitals. About a third of the hospitals reported having more than a month’s supply of N95 masks and surgical gowns.