As coronavirus infections continue receding across Florida, more offshoots of the pathogen’s omicron variant are rising up across the southeastern United States and the country as a whole.
COVID-19 infections and hospitalizations statewide have sunk to levels not seen since before the summer surge caused by the BA.4 and BA.5 omicron subvariants, the federal government reported Friday. At the same time, more of those mutations, which the latest Pfizer and Moderna shots are better equipped to fight than their first versions, comprise a growing share of cases in the South.
Florida logged 9,886 new COVID infections since Oct. 7, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported Friday, equivalent to what the state experienced at the end of the original omicron surge early this year.
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Hospitals statewide tended to 1,240 COVID-positive patients Friday, the U.S. Health and Human Services Department reported. That’s the least amount since May 10.
Florida’s death toll grew by 249 since the state Health Department’s last biweekly pandemic report published Oct. 7. The state has added fewer fatalities each week since summer. Deaths can take weeks to enter official statistics, meaning they lag behind other indicators.
COVID particles in wastewater still going down
Sewage from Palm Beach, Miami-Dade, Hillsborough, Pinellas, Orange, Seminole and Alachua counties continue to show flat or declining numbers of coronavirus particles, according to laboratory test results posted Wednesday by Boston-based Biobot Analytics.
While the BA.4 and BA.5 subvariants dominated the country this past summer — comprising about 80% of cases across the South — new versions of omicron are pushing them out.
Other mutations, such as BA.4.6., BF.7, BQ.1 and others comprise an estimated 33% of new COVID cases in the region this week, the CDC reported Friday.
The Florida Department of Health used to regularly supply news outlets with information showing how many special coronavirus tests detected viral mutations but stopped this spring..
Unlike other large states, Florida has done little, if anything, to promote the newest boosters from Pfizer and Moderna, which are designed to fight omicron offshoots better than the original ones from 2020, built for the original version of the virus from Wuhan, China
The state Health Department has not advertised the latest version of the vaccine on its website or social media platforms.
The front page of the department’s website instead provides vaccine exemption forms for those who do not want to get the shots. More than 80% of eligible Floridians have gotten at least one dose of the vaccine. About 29% of residents have gotten the boosters that were approved last year, CDC figures reported Friday show.
Florida and the CDC do not provide data showing how many residents have gotten the latest Pfizer or Moderna shots, also called the bivalent boosters, which were federally approved in late August. Children as young as 5 years old can get them, the Food and Drug Administration said Wednesday.
Rep. Carlos Smith’s gets a victory in suit against Department of Health
In his quest to force the Health Department to provide COVID data that it is legally obligated to under state law, state Rep. Carlos Smith scored a small victory this week in a lawsuit he filed more than a year ago.
The Orlando-area Democrat sued the department in July 2021, during the height of the deadly delta variant surge, to make it provide daily COVID case counts for Orange County, broken down by demographics such as age, race and sex. News companies, including Palm Beach Post owner Gannett Inc., joined Smith’s lawsuit.
The state had stopped publishing that data the previous month, saying the worst of the pandemic was over. That summer, Florida became the national epicenter for COVID infections and deaths.
But state health officials refused to provide the data it had been publishing daily for more than a year, claiming it is exempt from doing so because of state privacy laws.
As part of its defense, the department wanted to shield then-Surgeon General Scott Rivkees from giving sworn testimony.
A state appeals court on Thursday dismissed the state’s request, bringing the case one step closer to trial.
Medical experts say that the data Smith seeks won’t help people monitor COVID in Florida. And other agencies, such as the CDC, have cut back on daily reporting.
University of South Florida epidemiologist Dr. Jason Salemi, who regularly tracks detailed COVID data across Florida and its 67 counties on his online dashboard, said the state needs to track other diseases, too.
“It’s easy to say that we need staff focusing on detailed daily reporting on all things COVID, but what do we sacrifice in its place?” he said in an email.
And current official daily COVID case data is inaccurate, said Dr. Amesh Adalja, senior scholar for Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security. “So many people are doing at-home tests,” he said. Those results don’t make it into government statistics.
Adalja instead suggests monitoring wastewater and hospitalization data. Weekly updates on COVID cases and deaths should suffice, he said.
Smith, however, says the point of this case is to enforce state law giving the public the right to view government data. “Winning this case would establish an important precedent that state government cannot use this exemption as an excuse to deny public records,” he said.
Chris Persaud is The Palm Beach Post’s data reporter. Email him at cpersaud@pbpost.com.
