“We are now in crisis mode,” said Orange County Mayor Jerry Demings during a press conference July 26 as he spoke about the rising number of COVID-19 cases in Central Florida. “Now these numbers are extraordinary. We are seeing nearly 1,000 new cases in Orange County daily. Those are the numbers we saw at the highest peak last year.”
Cases are up in every county across Florida. According to a county-by-county tracking map from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, as of July 30, every county in the state except for one is in the red, or High Level of Community Transmission. Glades County currently sits in orange, or Substantial Level of Community Transmission.
Alan Harris, the Chief Administrator for the Office of Emergency Management in Seminole County, says the current increase in positive COVID-19 cases may be tied to the recent Fourth of July holiday weekend.
“So after holidays, we always expect a slight uptick in cases,” Harris says. “We saw that last year right after Memorial Day. We’ve seen it, of course, after Christmas and New Year’s and we’re seeing it now.”
Harris says what is different this time from previous spikes after holidays is there are limited mitigation efforts that are taking place.
“After Memorial Day and July 4th of last year, we had mask mandates and there were not large events going on, there weren’t places to congregate as much. The virus didn’t have the ability to continue to grow in the community because there just really wasn’t a lot of opportunities for it to grow,” Harris says. “We have no mask mandates now. Everything is open 100%. So really, there’s very limited mitigation other than vaccines. Now vaccines have helped to keep the numbers a little bit lower. I don’t even know what the numbers would look like had we not had vaccines.”
Another reason for the increased numbers, the Delta variant of the COVID-19 virus is much more transmissible and has become the dominant strain in many countries, including the U.S. The first Delta case was identified in December 2020, and the strain spread rapidly, soon becoming the dominant strain of the virus in both India and then Great Britain. By July, Delta was the cause of more than 80% of new U.S. COVID-19 cases, according to the CDC.
According to research by Yale Medicine, the Delta variant is spreading 50% faster than the Alpha variant, the strain that first appeared in Great Britain, which was 50% more contagious than the original strain of COVID-19.
“In a completely unmitigated environment—where no one is vaccinated or wearing masks—it’s estimated that the average person infected with the original coronavirus strain will infect 2.5 other people,” said F. Perry Wilson, MD, a Yale Medicine epidemiologist in an interview with YaleMedicine.org. “In the same environment, Delta would spread from one person to maybe 3.5 or 4 other people.”
According to CNN, The CDC — in an internal document — warns that the Delta variant is as contagious as chickenpox, has a longer transmission window and may make older people sicker, even if they’re fully vaccinated. CDC Director Dr. Rochelle Walensky confirmed the authenticity of the document to CNN, which was first reported by The Washington Post.
With increasing numbers and the Delta variant being the dominate strain in the U.S., one might think shutdowns similar to last year would be on the horizon but that most likely will not happen in Florida, Harris says.
“So we have seen some of those types of mitigation efforts occur in other states and really other countries to stop the spread of the virus,” he says. “What we’re hearing from the state of Florida and then based on the new state of Florida law, we do not see any way that mitigation efforts legally could occur. So we don’t see the lockdowns occurring. We don’t see the mask mandates.”
The “new state of Florida law” Harris mentioned was signed by Gov. Ron DeSantis in May and went into effect July 1, and gives DeSantis sweeping powers to invalidate local emergency measures put in place during the pandemic — including mask mandates, limitations on business operations and the shuttering of schools. At the time he signed the new law, DeSantis also nullified all local emergency orders relating to the pandemic and waived all fines issued by local governments relating to COVID-19.
Harris says that the use of mitigation efforts such as mask mandates, shutdowns and reduced crowd sizes at events — like the ones used last year — are not used to try and get “anyone in trouble.”
“Our part in this has always been education, he says. “When we have issued mandatory evacuations for hurricanes, we’ve never arrested anyone because they didn’t evacuate. We’ve never gone to a mobile home or manufactured home and rip someone out of their house. We’ve never done any of that. The mask mandate was the same thing. We’ve never written a citation. We had no intention of doing anything like that. We wanted people to understand the gravity of the situation and that there are fatalities occurring and how just like if it was a hurricane and you stay in your home, there’s a possibility you could die if you’re in a mobile home or if you’re in a flood-prone area. There’s a possibility you could die if you don’t wear a mask and you’re not vaccinated.”
While mask mandates cannot be implemented by local governments, businesses still have the right to decide if their customers need to wear masks, and many companies are reinstituting their mask mandates. Along with many local restaurants, shops and offices, Walt Disney World has stepped up as the largest company in Central Florida to require face masks to be worn when indoors at its parks or on Disney transportation, regardless of vaccination status.
Something else that has local officials worried, the Delta surge is overwhelming hospitals across the entire state again.
“Our hospitals are extremely busy,” Harris notes. “AdventHealth put out information that they were in what they call Code Red. We had reports from a neighboring hospital, Halifax, that’s also experiencing that. Orlando Health is experiencing a very high number of COVID patients and Hospital Corporation of America, which runs two hospitals here in Seminole County — Central Florida Regional, which is a trauma center, and Oviedo Hospital — both of those are extremely busy with COVID-19 patients now.”
After our interview with Harris, AdventHealth — Central Florida’s largest hospital chain — said as of July 30 there were more than 1,000 COVID-19 patients in their hospitals across Orange, Osceola, Seminole, Lake, Polk, Volusia and Flagler counties prompting them to escalate to Code Black. More than 90% of those hospitalized are unvaccinated, AdventHealth stated.
Harris added, “There at capacity but they have backup plans to open up extra wings, things like that, but it does take a lot of resources to do that.”
Those resources are coming from other areas of the hospital which puts a strain on everyone in the hospital regardless of why they are there.
“It’s not just for COVID. Heaven forbid a family member has a heart attack or a stroke or something like that. We want the nurses and the doctors to be available and proficient. We don’t want them to be exhausted while they’re treating other patients because they are working extra hours to cover COVID patients,” Harris says.
While we make our way through this surge, Harris says there are things everyone needs to make sure they are doing, and they are the same things that were being advised over the last year and half when case numbers surged.
“Number one, if you haven’t been vaccinated yet, do it,” Harris says. “ Also, think about where you’re going to go and if there’s going to be large groups, and know that facial coverings and masks are a good idea. I’m already seeing that people in grocery stores and restaurants are now wearing facial masks and coverings more so than two weeks ago. That’s a good thing. People are seeing the news. They are understanding what’s going on.”
To find out where you can get a free COVID-19 vaccine in your area, go to FloridaHealth.gov.
Additional reporting by Tomás Diniz Santos.
