White House report puts Florida in the COVID ‘red zone,’ recommends more stringent steps
In a report not yet made public, the White House Coronavirus Task Force classifies Florida in the “red zone” — among 10 states at the most risk for continued spread because of high case numbers and high percentage of positive tests.
That’s certainly not surprising given Florida’s surging cases and a mounting death toll. But the state is also currently following only some of the recommendations the federal public health experts recommend in the report.
The report obtained by the Center for Public Integrity was dated July 14 but not posted publicly.
Dr. Ashish Jha, director of the Harvard Global Health Institute, told the CPI he thought the information and recommendations were mostly good.
“The fact that it’s not public makes no sense to me,” Jha said Thursday. “Why are we hiding this information from the American people? This should be published and updated every day.”
A White House official told McClatchy on Friday that the coronavirus task force is recommending states listed in “red zones” begin implementing more stringent protective measures.
“Dr. [Deborah] Birx and some other members of the task force put together that document,” a White House official confirmed. “There are measures that they can take to help slow the spread. I think what the task force and the administration has been consistent in saying is that we don’t have plans to shut down the economy again.” Birx is the coordinator of the White House coronavirus task force.
President Donald Trump has been particularly vocal about reopening the country and economy, most recently pushing for schools to reopen.
But the rising cases are clearly both a political and public health challenge for the White House. On Thursday, the Republican National Committee announced it would limit attendance at its convention in Jacksonville and may push events outdoors. Twelve of Florida’s 13 Democrats in the House of Representatives urged Gov. Ron DeSantis in a letter on Friday to issue a statewide mask order and stay-at-home orders.
That has not yet happened.
The White House report classifies 18 states in the red zone for case numbers and 11 in the red zone for test positivity. Ten states, including Florida, are in the red zone for both.
And South Florida, according to the state’s running count of cases, is the hottest zone in the red zone. The White House report notes that Miami-Dade, Broward and Hillsborough counties have the highest number of new cases, representing 40.7% of new cases in the state.
With case numbers, a red zone designation requires more than 100 new cases per 100,000 people based on data from last week. Test positivity indicates a positivity rate above 10%. Miami-Dade reported a positivity rate of 16.5% on Friday.
The ideal positivity rate is below 3% because that shows the coronavirus is being suppressed, said Jessica Malaty Rivera, science communication lead at the COVID Tracking Project to the Center for Public Integrity.
The task force report includes policy recommendations for messaging, public officials and testing.
The White House report encourages public officials to close gyms, which are open in Miami-Dade and Broward, and for retail businesses and personal service providers to require masks and ensure safe social distancing, measures which are in place.
The report stresses fast and thorough contact tracing. “Recruit more contact tracers as community outreach workers to ensure all cases are contacted and all positive households are individually tested within 24 hours,” the report says.
On July 9, Miami-Dade Mayor Carlos Gimenez announced the hiring of 250 additional contact tracers to add to 300 already working but local mayors complained that still wasn’t nearly enough. Miami-Dade would need 10,449 contact tracers or about 387 per 100,000 residents to effectively trace new COVID-19 cases, according to the Mullan Institute at George Washington University, which publishes a contact tracing workforce estimator.
The White House task force report also recommends isolation facilities for COVID-positive individuals who can’t safely quarantine at home. Some have been announced in Miami-Dade via hotel rooms and a shuttered hospital.
Public officials are also urged to provide tailored messages to communities with high case rates and groups at serious risk because of preexisting conditions.
For residents, recommendations include mask wearing, which is mandatory in Miami-Dade and Broward; limiting social gatherings to 10 people or fewer; not going to bars, nightclubs or gyms; getting takeout food or eating outdoors socially distanced; and limiting public interactions to 25% of normal activity.
In terms of testing, community-led neighborhood testing, also recommended, has been instituted to an extent. The report also calls for diagnostic pooling, in which test results should be delivered within 12 hours, and surveillance pooling, in which entire households are screened together.
This story was originally published July 17, 2020 at 4:16 PM.