FLAGLER COUNTY, Fla. – Flagler County is seeing double the number of coronavirus cases in young people so far in August compared to all of July, numbers show.
County Commissioner Joe Mullins’ 15-year-old daughter started feeling symptoms a day before school started last week.
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“It becomes very real when you’re checking your phone and your home is calling you and you’re dreading if it’s a call that your daughter is being rushed to the hospital,” he said.
Now, Mullins said he’s comforting her over the phone, staying socially distant while she recovers.
“She’s exhausted, she’s tired, she’s a little pale but her spirits are up,” he said.
Mullins said he and his wife are vaccinated but his daughter is not.
Now, he’s encouraging parents to go directly to their children’s doctor as soon as possible to see if they should be vaccinated.
“It’s not a political issue. It’s a medical issue. And we need to be listening to the professionals that are trained,” he said.
His daughter is one of 441 people under 24 years old in the county to catch the virus so far in August, according to Flagler County Health. That’s almost double the 224 people under 24 who caught it in July.
“We’re averaging in the month of August about 103 new cases a day that the health department is investigating,” said the county’s health commissioner Bob Snyder at Monday’s county commission meeting.
Snyder said as of Monday evening, 86 people in the county were hospitalized with COVID.
“Of the hospitalized, 93% here in our own hospital are unvaccinated and at Halifax Health over the weekend, it was reported that 83% of their COVID patients are unvaccinated,” he said.
Including all age groups, Snyder said there’s been a 77% increase in COVID-19 cases in the county over the last month, but he also says there’s been a 95% increase in vaccination rates in that time frame, too.
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