I've borrowed an image for my dashboard that reflects how it seems spread has occurred (thanks Santa).
Let's have a quick walk-through.
1/15
Here's the overview of metrics.
- cases are surging, setting daily records, approaching new record over 7 days
- more testing than ever before
- both of the above likely underestimated between at-home tests and absence of reinfections in the daily numbers
- hosps increasing
2/15
This county-level infection rate fig blows my mind.
Only 2 weeks separates the left and right maps.
I thought my home county's (Hillsborough) 507% increase was crazy.
But check out these 2-week increases:
- Dade: 1790% (19 times higher)
- Broward: 1437%
- Palm Bch: 1167%
3/15
As I mentioned, testing higher than ever in 1 week, and likely does not include a bunch of at-home tests...
But positivity had a huge increase because the increase in cases blew the increase in testing out of the water.
4/15
Again, look at these crazy increases in positivity over the last 2 weeks:
- Dade: from 2.0% to 16.6%
- Broward: from 2.6% to 19.1%
- Palm Bch: from 2.6% to 17.1%
5/15
And when we fade back out to the state level, the comparison to 2 weeks ago is just striking.
Florida's 7-day average daily cases is 956% higher with 19,124 MORE daily cases than two weeks ago.
6/15
Not only do we have the most pronounced increase over the last 2 weeks, but we now also have the 8th highest cases per capita over the past 7 days.
7/15
The recent increases are seen in every age group, but the biggest driver has been those 20-39.
In people 20-29, the rate is higher than it's ever been, including during the delta surge.
8/15
For perspective, it took about 36 days from the initial increase in cases until we eclipsed 21,100 average daily cases during #delta.
It's happened in one-third of that time - 12 days - during #omicron.
Our 7-day avg right now is only ~500 cases below our all-time high.
9/15
Hospitalizations for COVID are going up.
But first some all-important context.
As you can see in the figure, we are nowhere near #delta's astonishing levels.
Not yet and hopefully not ever.
10/15
As @nataliexdean articulated, this may be due to #omicron having:
- younger lower-risk ppl comprise higher % of cases
- higher % of re-infections & breakthrough cases, also less likely to result in severe illness
In my thread last night on just a few of the reasons for D-I-R-T-Y data on #COVID19#vaccination status, I failed to explain the potential impact of duplicate records being created.
In the fig, we have what actually happened (top), a situation in which the booster got assigned to a different record (treated as a different person in calculations), and a hopefully rare situation in which all three doses were treated as though they belonged to diff people.
2/5
Here's an example when 7% of people completing a 2-dose series had duplicate records that were created.
Those w/ a completed initial series was UNDERestimated by 6.3%.
Those w/ "only first dose" was OVERestimated by 12.6%.
People may be assigned to a county based on where they got the shot and not where they lived. [that's the numerator]
Since the denominator is based on place of residence, the % vaccinated can end up out of whack.
2/16
Problem occurs when misclassification in one direction (calling a non-Hillsborough resident a Hillsborough resident to a greater extent than the opposite direction (calling a Hillsborough resident a non-Hillsborough resident).
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.
When #COVID19 vaccines first became available, nobody knew how long the benefits would last. Many hoped the shots would offer full protection for a year or longer.
2/
Unfortunately, well-conducted research studies in the summer of 2021 have demonstrated that the effectiveness of the vaccines starts to decline (wane) after 4-6 months. For the Janssen (J&J) vaccine, waning begins after only 2 months!
3/
But near-current county-level #COVID19 deaths in #Florida (and throughout the country) has long been available through the National Center for Health Statistics at @CDCgov.
People have already pointed to differences between these data sources as further "evidence" that @HealthyFla is getting something wrong or hiding something.
Others have used both data sources to calculate rates and compare counties on their cumulative COVID-19 mortality.
3/