‘We’re having a spike.’ COVID-19 cases, hospitalizations rising in Miami-Dade.
Over the past week, rising cases and hospitalizations from COVID-19 have confirmed fears among Miami-Dade County officials that a third wave of the virus would flare up around the Thanksgiving holiday.
“We’re having a spike,” Miami-Dade Deputy Mayor Jennifer Moon told county commissioners on Friday morning.
After plateauing at a low level throughout much of the fall, the number of patients at Miami-Dade hospitals with the virus began to accelerate toward the end of October. That number reached 529 on Friday morning — a 61% increase from Oct. 17. Florida’s autumn resurgence has been more muted than northern, cold-weather states that are driving cases and hospitalizations to record highs at the national level, but the virus now appears to be picking up momentum in the Sunshine State.
The Florida Department of Health reported 1,843 cases for Miami-Dade on Friday — the highest daily total in weeks. Hospital admissions in the county have been climbing week-by-week since October, with the seven-day average hitting 63 patients per day on Friday, up from an average of 50 patients per day on Friday the week before. The average hovered at around 40 patients per day for much of the second half of October.
Though county officials said the spike is expected to peak in the third week of November. Mary Jo Trepka, an infectious disease epidemiologist and professor at Florida International University, said that it would be hard to predict the course of the virus in South Florida, one of the hardest-hit areas of the country. But Trepka doubted that transmission would peak this month and begin to abate by December.
“Based on what’s happened over the last week, it looks like we’ve begun a surge again,” Trepka said on Friday.
Trepka emphasized personal responsibility, noting that Miami-Dade officials no longer have the option of closing bars or fining for mask violations after Gov. Ron DeSantis issued an executive order undercutting those control measures at the end of September. Holiday celebrations, she said, should be outdoors and with people wearing masks and six feet apart.
“That’s the only acceptable Thanksgiving we can have right now,” she said. “And if people are going to have indoor events, I think the likelihood that the increase is going to accelerate is going to be even greater.”
In an interview with the Miami Herald, Moon, the deputy mayor who oversees the coronavirus statistics, said county officials are especially concerned with a spiking positivity rate — or the percentage of tests coming back positive. That percentage has ranged from 7% to 9.25% over the last week after months of hovering around 5%.
Moon had hoped Thursday’s 9% positivity rate was a fluke, and told the Herald before Friday’s report came out that officials were eyeing the positivity rate of all tests at Jackson Memorial Hospital, which climbed to 10% this week.
“We have not gotten the state numbers yet and that always frightens me,” Moon said early Friday afternoon, an hour before the report was released. “When the state numbers are delayed, something is going on.”
Though cases and positive tests can be asymptomatic, Trepka said that measures of severe illness — hospitalizations and the percentage of emergency room visits with COVID-like symptoms, are also pointing in the wrong direction for South Florida. She stressed that mask wearing and physical distancing are the best ways to blunt the impact of a third wave.
“I don’t think anybody can predict when or how high it’s going to peak,” Trepka said. “It’s going to depend on how we react to it.”
This story was originally published November 13, 2020 at 4:03 PM.
