Mayor encourages outdoor holiday dining as omicron outbreak looms in Miami-Dade

Holiday dinners would be best outdoors and people should wear masks indoors among unvaccinated friends and family, Miami-Dade Mayor Daniella Levine Cava said Thursday as her administration preps for a surge in COVID-19 cases from a more contagious version of COVID-19 known as the omicron variant.

Levine Cava stopped well short of urging residents to alter holiday plans during her pre-Christmas press conference at the Tropical Park county testing site. As she spoke, cars and trucks snaked in a line for COVID testing amid a spike in demand. Her remarks centered on suggestions to lower the risk of catching COVID as more signs point to rising spread of the disease in Miami-Dade and beyond.

“Please take your gathering outside into this beautiful weather. Gathering outdoors, we know, reduces the risks significantly of transmission,” she said. “Wear your masks around large crowds of people, people you don’t know are vaccinated.”

Levine Cava said she had no plans to return mandatory mask rules for county buildings, a restriction she put in place during the surge of the delta variant in July and which Levine Cava lifted on Nov. 5. She urged people to get vaccinated against COVID-19 and to receive booster shots, which research shows is a particularly helpful protection against omicron.

She said Miami-Dade this week launched an outreach operation to bring free booster shots — as well as first-time vaccinations — to home-bound residents. Anyone interested can call 888-201-5490 or email vaccinations@ilshealth.com.

While confirmed omicron cases remain rare in Miami-Dade, multiple indicators suggest COVID is rapidly on the rise in Florida’s most populous county, likely due to the new variant. The seven-day average of COVID tests coming back positive hit 7% this week, up from just 1% in tests taken 30 days ago.

Jackson Memorial Hospital, Miami-Dade’s public healthcare provider, saw its COVID-19 patient count hit 58 on Thursday, the first time it was above 50 since late November.

Regular COVID analysis of the county’s sewage system has confirmed the presence of omicron, and a sampling of COVID test results at county testing centers at the start of December also detected the variant.

In Miami-Dade, at least six cases of the omicron variant have been detected. Levine Cava’s office confirmed Thursday that five of 373 samples sequenced— or 1%— of tests taken around two weeks ago were cases caused by the omicron variant. The rest were lineages of the delta variant.

On Dec. 10, CardioPath, a private lab in Doral, confirmed the county’s first case.

The previous positive 746 samples sequenced by Nomi Health, the healthcare company Miami-Dade partnered with for testing, vaccination and sequencing, were all caused by delta lineages. These samples dated back to tests taken since Oct. 31.

Only a small percentage of COVID positive PCR tests are sampled, and COVID-19 cases caused by omicron have been shown to double every couple of days, so the number of coronavirus cases caused by the omicron variant in Miami-Dade is likely much higher.

But the early indicators likely are just hints of a wider surge already underway in Miami-Dade and beyond, a disease expert said.

“Data more than one week old may grossly underestimate the prevalence of omicron that is currently circulating,” said Jason Salemi, an associate professor of epidemiology at the University of South Florida’s college of public health, in an email to the Herald.

Just two weeks ago, Florida’s seven-day average of cases added each day was around 1,900. In the past two days alone, the state has added just over 10,500 cases, according to data published by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

“The best explanation for these pronounced increases is a rapidly spreading omicron variant, and I would anticipate increasing cases, test positivity, and prevalence of the omicron lineages in the coming weeks,” wrote Salemi.

County testing sites, including Tropical Park, are seeing a spike in demand this week. The head of the Miami-Dade testing operation said that’s likely a mix of more people getting sick, as well as rising interest in tests over the holidays, be it as a precaution before traveling to visit family or testing requirements for flying into foreign airports.

“We’ve actually seen a spike in test demand over the last several days. We’re adding staff. We’re working around the clock,” said Ron Goncalves, Florida general manager for Nomi Health, which has the county contract for vaccination and testing sites. He joined Levine Cava for the Tropical Park press conference.

“What was normally a 15-minute wait here has gone up to an hour in some instances,” he said as cars backed up onto Bird Road from the park entrance. “We are working diligently to reduce those wait times.”

This story was originally published December 16, 2021 at 4:26 PM.