FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. — All three South Florida counties have high COVID-19 community levels, despite the most recent data from the Centers for Disease Control showing the region having medium levels.
The difference between the levels is significant. The CDC recommends that people in areas with high community levels should wear masks indoors in public places and lists additional precautions for high-risk people.
The change is revealed in a footnote to the data released on Thursday, which says that a “data processing error” left Florida’s per capita case rate blank in every county. The rate is one of several factors — including hospitalizations and testing positivity — used to calculate community transmission levels.
“Of note, Broward, Miami-Dade, Palm Beach Counties should have appeared in the high CCL category, and Osceola County should have appeared in the medium CCL category,” the CDC footnote reads.
Palm Beach, Broward and Miami-Dade counties’ positivity rates are all over 17%, levels not seen since early February. And COVID-related hospitalizations have increased to their highest levels in more than 10 weeks, though critical-care patients are not increasing at the same pace.
And Florida’s cases have been steadily climbing since mid-March, with the seven-day average for new cases reaching 8,178 on Friday, the highest level since mid-February. The number is likely severely undercounted due to the number of people taking at-home tests and not reporting results to state health officials.
The CDC and the Florida Department of Public Health did not respond to Saturday morning requests for comment. Among the questions raised was was where the data processing error occurred and when it would be corrected.
Jason Salemi, an epidemiologist and associate professor at the University of South Florida, noted that nearly a third of Floridians live in South Florida and do not have accurate information on their risk levels.
“Although these data issues will arise from time to time, to me, the bigger problem is that the data suggested that the three largest counties in Florida, in which 3 in 10 Floridians reside, should be in the “high” community level,” Salemi told the South Florida Sun Sentinel. “That’s important because there is a substantial shift in the CDC’s mitigation guidance when an area shifts into the ‘high’ level, including the recommendation for everyone to ‘wear a well-fitting mask indoors in public, regardless of vaccination status'.”
COVID-related hospitalizations in Florida are up nearly 50% in the past two weeks, with 1,981 in the state’s hospitals as of Friday, according to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.
“It must be extremely frustrating for people, businesses, and communities to make responsible decisions when one of the primary and most well-known federal tools for assessing “community risk” was so misleading,” Salemi said Saturday.
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