- Florida leads the nation in new COVID-19 cases, as well as in deaths attributed to the disease.
- The state’s governor has urged people to get vaccinated, but he has tried to block local mask mandates and has insisted businesses will be shut down.
- Experts say these factors have contributed to the COVID-19 surge in Florida, which they don’t expect will peak for at least another few weeks.
Florida is the epicenter of a resurgent rise in COVID-19 cases, fueled by the highly infectious Delta variant.
The Sunshine State currently leads the nation by a wide margin in new COVID-19 cases as well as deaths attributed to the disease.
On July 31, Florida reported the most single-day new cases the state has experienced since the pandemic at 21,683 with new confirmed cases up 50 percent in the previous week. The state accounts for one-fifth of all new COVID-19 cases in the United States.
About 22 percent of intensive care unit beds in Florida hospitals are occupied by people with COVID-19, the highest rate in the nation.
“In some ways it’s a simple calculus,” Dr. Stephen Kimmel, chair of the department of epidemiology at the University of Florida’s College of Public Health and Health Professions & School of Medicine, told Healthline. “You have a variant that spreads much more easily, people who are contagious for a longer period of time, people who are vaccinated can probably carry it and spread it to others, and the Delta variant is more dangerous and leading to more hospitalizations.”
Hospital beds in the state are filling up rapidly with people who have serious cases of COVID-19, said Mary Mayhew, president and chief executive officer of the Florida Hospital Association.
“The Delta variant is leading to very sick individuals in hospitals and is ripping through the unvaccinated,” she told Healthline.
Mayhew added that COVID-19 hospitalizations in Florida have surged from about 2,000 to more than 10,000 in the past month. In 2020, it took 2 months for caseloads to make a similar numerical leap.
Source: healthline