Now that that's out of the way, a brief #Florida update.
Well, as expected, cases are increasing at a rapid rate. More than a doubling from last week.
1/12
As we dive deeper to the county level, although the increases are pretty consistent, our 3 largest counties in the southeastern part of the state are skyrocketing.
The percent changes for this past week (far right bar) reflect increases for every age group, but most pronounced for those 20-49.
The smallest increase is in the most vaccinated age group (and the most likely to take precautions), those people 65+.
3/12
You can also see this age effect in the figure below, which just shows the age distribution of cases over time. As the rightmost point in the graph, you can see the abrupt shift to younger ages.
4/12
Positivity has also more than doubled, now back above 5%.
Again, the most pronounced increases were in our large southeastern counties: Dade, Broward, and Palm Beach.
5/12
Here's the national look at cases over time. Sorted by recent 7-day rate per capita, from worst-to-best.
On my dashboard, I also added a color to each line, reflecting the % change over the past week.
Florida is red because it increased by >100%.
6/12
Here's another way to visualize it. This plots average daily cases per capita (y-axis) vs. % change in the past week (x-axis).
Further 'north', the higher your current rate (bad)
Further 'right', the more you increased over the past 7 days (also bad)
Red arrow = Florida
7/12
Though adults hospital admissions are up about 17% in the past week, I want to wait 7-10 days after this current surge in cases to see the extent to which it results in an increase in adult and pediatric admissions for COVID-19.
More soon on how that metric changes.
8/12
Finally, the all-important vaccinations.
Only about half of all seniors are estimated to be 'optimally immunized' meaning:
- vax in the past 6mo (Pfizer/Moderna) or vax in last 2mo (J&J)
- vax before the above windows, but received a booster to address waning immunity
9/12
This is the national look. The figure is sorted by the % of the senior population that is optimally immunized, from best-to-worst.
Florida is middle of the pack.
Very worrisome when we look at the small % of the large 18-64 age group who is optimally vaccinated.
10/12
One final way to look at the % optimally immunized by state.
On the left: all age groups combined - NO STATE has >50% of people in this ideal category.
On the right: 65+ - any state not in a blue shade has at least 4 in 10 seniors not optimally immunized.
11/12
There's your quick run-down.
Remember, nothing is inevitable despite #omicron's transmissibility and immune escape capability looking pretty sucky.
There really is plenty you can do to protect yourself, your friends and family, and your community.
Stay safe!
12/12
For those of you inquiring about the vac status algorithm...
When speaking with NPR last week, I said the plateauing of hospitalizations for 3 weeks made me feel like a downturn was coming.
In FL, the data are suggestive of improvements in the # of people being hospitalized w/ COVID.
1/
The state-specific trends in the COVID hospital census since June 1 also suggest we are seeing a recent decrease in FL (dk purple), the US as a whole (black), and a number of states.
Yes, FL still has among the highest rates, but we also have one of the oldest populations.
2/
If we indeed see a prolonged decrease in COVID hospitalization census, many of the largest states, who have been below previous pandemic years, will start their decrease right as they approach (but do not exceed) 2022 rates.
Sorry for the delay everyone, a lot going on personally. But I have modified my dashboard to accommodate the CDC reporting changes.
My site focuses on: 1) Hospitalization-based county risk levels 2) Detailed hosp trends 3) Deaths
with links out for wastewater, variants, vax
1/
The "Risk Indicators" page is similar to the older page, but the data upon which indicators are based has changed. There are no longer "risk levels" and "transmission levels", rather levels based exclusively on "confirmed" COVID hospital admission rates over the prior 7 days.
2/
The "Hospitalizations" page has not changed much. Still starts out with a Florida-centric look and then gives a lot of state- and age-specific census and admission numbers, rates, and rankings.
It's been a while since I've done a #COVID update.
These are national weekly @CDCgov "community levels" based primarily on hospitalization rates.
This past week has been the "best" since April of last year with <1% of the population living in a high-level county.
1/
Of course, this comes with the following caveats according to the CDC, with likely underestimation of levels in Hawaii and Mississippi, and overestimation in several counties in Georgia and Arizona.
2/
Transmission levels are likely to be grossly underreported, but as we look at them over time, are showing modest improvement (LEFT).
This is in agreement with the regional wastewater monitoring data, which also shows improvements over the last 6 weeks (RIGHT).
2/ Below are adult inpatient hospital census rates for each state since May 1, 2022. Only "confirmed" (as opposed to suspected) COVID hospitalizations are included.
The orange and red coloring suggests recent increases over the past week.
3/ But for context, below are the inpatient census stats for adults throughout the pandemic - for most states, we remain well below the worst parts of the pandemic (not that that should be the bar we are trying to avoid).
2/ Clearly, part of our genomic surveillance efforts are to have TIMELY information when more concerning variants are increasing in relative prevalence. In this case, it appears we lost some time (I was wondering why those variants were not yet showing up).
3/ BUT, I don't tend to jump to an accusation of something nefarious.
The beginning of the footnote states that variants circulating <1% are grouped into "other".