ORANGE COUNTY, Fla. – The numbers appear to be heading in the wrong direction in Florida’s fight against COVID-19.
For the second week in a row, federal health leaders said one in five cases in the U.S. were in Florida. The Sunshine State along with Texas and Missouri account for 40% of all cases in the country, federal health leaders said.
Dr. David Rubin is the director of PolicyLab at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia. His team has been tracking COVID-19 data.
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“I’m sufficiently worried about the state of Florida given its low enough vaccination rate,” Rubin said.
Rubin said the spike in COVID cases in Florida comes down to this.
“It’s very, very clear right now that what’s responsible for what’s going on are a large number of unvaccinated individuals and a large disease reservoir now and when this virus has an opportunity to propagate it will,” Rubin said.
Rubin said Florida is now the epicenter of transmissions. He adds the state hasn’t seen numbers like this since late winter.
But even as Florida sees more positive cases, Rubin said the focus needs to be on hospitalizations.
“We’ve seen about a 30% increase in testing, positivity rates soaring locally well over 20% and hospitalizations that have now quickly quadrupled on the daily level in just a couple of weeks,” Rubin said.