The Flagler Department of Health confirmed today that a 50-year-old woman died of Covid-19, the third death of a Flagler County resident attributed to the disease in three days, bringing the county’s total to eight.
The county also reported 26 new positive cases of coronavirus, a single-day record, bringing the week’s total so far to 127, also a record, with one day of reporting to go in the week. Flagler County has now reached a cumulative 600 cases since the pandemic began in March, a number unimaginable even a few weeks ago. More than a third of the cases have been confirmed only in the last 14 days, with a positivity rate of 9.6 percent during that span.
AdventHealth Palm Coast is an epicenter of the surge. “As of yesterday, there were 16 hospitalizations related to Covid in our facility,” Health Department Chief Bob Snyder said today. “I don’t really know the mix of ICU versus PCU, but I believe it’s more PCU patients related to Covid–Progressive Care Unit, it’s a step-down unit from the intensive care unit.”
We’re kind of getting clobbered here in Flagler County,” Snyder said in comments on WNZF radio this morning and in a phone interview later. On Thursday, the health department had reported the death of a 50-year-old man, and the day before, the death of an 82-year-old man.
Florida reported 11,466 new coronavirus cases today and 130 more deaths, for a total of 327,000 cases and 4,912 deaths. The seven-day average of daily deaths rose to 101 today, belying earlier claims by Gov. Ron DeSantis that the ongoing surge was less lethal or more manageable than in April, when daily death averages remained in the low 50s. The age of those dying–as has been the case in Flagler the last two days–has not necessarily fit the profile of April’s death, though people 60 and older continue to account for the majority of fatalities.
Snyder and Stephen Bickel, a physician and the director of the Flagler and Volusia health departments, spoke in sobering terms today of the spread of the disease, making no distinction in the “dire situation” between the county and the state. Their position contrasts with that of a few elected officials in the county who continue to brag about the county’s lower numbers, compared to other parts of the state–an irrelevant comparison considering the damaging effects the numbers are having locally.
“I think we’ve done a great job in our community, I think the numbers are great, the last thing I think you do is go and punish the community for doing so well. I don’t want to act like the rest of the state. Our numbers are low. What we’ve done here is phenomenal,” County Commissioner Joe Mullins said earlier this week, speaking in opposition to mandating mask-wearing and ridiculing the mandates Palm Coast, Bunnell and Flagler Beach passed last week, though half the government jurisdictions in the country now have a mandate in some form. Janet McDonald, who chairs the school board, has been writing teachers concerned about returning to school on Aug. 10, telling them that major flu seasons in the past have been more impactful on school age children without closing.
Both elected officials’ claims are wrong, at least based on what Snyder and Bickel, who reflect the consensus of the public health and medical community on Covid-19, say: the coronavirus is not like the flu–it is far more infectious, more lethal, and more debilitating to many of those who are hospitalized and survive–nor are Flagler’s numbers “great,” but grim.
“We’re getting clobbered, that’s our word these days,” Bickel said. “It’s a lot more contagious than the flu, it’s kind of sobering how quickly the numbers shoot up as soon as we come out of the lockdown. It’s right there, this is happening round the world, it’s that a lot of these other countries are seeing these surges or bounces from a very low level where we’re seeing it from a higher level, and it’s very concerning.”
Bickel addressed misconceptions: “The other thing that people don’t necessarily understand,” he said, “is that once you get a certain level of cases in an area, it is not that easy to get that number down. I was just quoted a week or so ago about the case growth rate. If you use widespread mask use, you could get the case growth rate down to zero. Well, that doesn’t mean no cases. That just means the case count isn’t going up every week. Once you get to a high number, we talk about this R number, this reproductive number. If the R number is 1, that means you have 100 cases week one, 100 cases week two, 100 cases week three, on like that. If it’s 1.4, it means you have 100 cases week one, you have 140 cases the next cycle, it doesn’t even have to be a week. Then it goes up to 200. That’s what Florida was experiencing about a month ago, the R number for Florida was 1.47. It’s now down to 1.07, so we’ve made a lot of progress. It’s probably from three things: masks, people regulating themselves, just not going out as much, and to some degree, it’s some of the other measures that have been put in place. The problem is that now that we are at 10,000 to 15,000 cases in Florida a day, they don’t just drop by themselves.”
Unlike the flu, the coronavirus is not as affected by warmer weather, Bickel said, as the explosion of cases at the height of summer is indicating. “So I just urge people to realize what a battle this is, and it’s not a time for complacency, it’s not a time for divisiveness. This is a time to get the job done. It’s a big task here. It’s really daunting,” he said.
The Flagler health department is ramping up its community testing efforts. The Daytona State College testing site that has been one of the principal and steadiest testing sites for months will close by month’s end but only because it’s shifting to Cattleman’s Hall at the county fairgrounds off sawgrass road in Bunnell, where testing hours will double. The DSC testing site has been operating Mondays Tuesdays and Wednesdays from 9 a.m. to noon. The site at Cattleman’s Hall will operate the same days but until 3 p.m., with capacity for 200 tests a day starting on July 27. (Call the same number for an appointment: 386-313-4200.)
“I wanted to find a large location, a cavernous kind of space where we could be indoors safely and effectively,” Snyder said, “so our nurses could get out of the oppressive heat as well as the individuals being tested, what Cattleman’s Hall does is, it provides that solution.”
He said the department will be adding up to 40 additional staffers, but has added just 16 so far. “to respond to this tremendous surge of activity related to Covid in our community.” The goal: bringing the positivity rate below 3 percent. “The workload of our staff has tripled, I can’t imagine what it’s like at the hospital.”
The school district is continuing its plans to reopen by Aug. 10, but is offering three options, two of them remote instruction, making it possible that fewer students will attend in-person school than learn from home. Volusia County schools elected to delay school opening by at least a week beyond its initial start date of Aug. 17. Polk and Hillsborough County schools are doing likewise–by two weeks–with boards in Duval, Orange and other districts considering similar shifts.
In California, the governor today announced that most students will have to abandon in-person instruction until further notice, on a day when the total number of coronavirus cases in the United States surged by 75,000, yet another record–and a number unseen anywhere in the world at any point in the pandemic. The nation also reported close to 1,000 deaths.
A note about the positivity rate: This morning on the radio, Health Department Chief Bob Snyder referred to a 6.9 percent positivity rate over the past 14 days. He was relying on a county-by-county report that shows day-by-day tests and positive cases. But those totals combine the more accurate PCR tests and antigen testing data, a rapid test with a higher chance of false negatives. Antigen numbers have been used to dilute the positivity rate. As covidtracking.com notes, “On July 1, the Florida Department of Health started mixing antigen test results with PCR test results and calculating an overall percent-positive rate using this commingled data. The state does not break out the number of each type of test reported. Because these tests perform differently and antigen tests are more likely to provide false negative results, these tests should not be combined in reports. They should also not be used to calculate the percent positivity, which is likely to be artificially lowered by the inclusion of a test with a greater percentage of false negatives. Antigen tests are also not considered to be “confirmatory” tests, so people with positive antigen tests alone don’t count as confirmed cases of COVID-19. In fact, they don’t even count as probable cases without additional epidemiological or clinical evidence. Antigen test totals and results should be provided separately.” FlaglerLive from the beginning of the pandemic has relied only on the overall state report that reports only confirmed cases to the health department, which reflects a lower number of tests overall–though that’s the number the state is relying on as a measure of its overall testing efforts. (See Flagler’s numbers in the state report on page 24 of today’s report.)
