After weeks with an average of less than 2,000 daily cases of Covid-19 in Florida (USA), the alarms have jumped when registering 29,568 new infections in the state for the period from December 10 to 16, a figure much higher than last week (13,530 cases), and with the variant Omicron already detected in 39 US states.
The numbers of new cases had remained somewhat stable this fall and well below the more than 21,000 daily reported this summer, which peaked in August with more than 150,000 weekly infections and a positivity rate of more than 20 %.
The contagions do not give truce
But the contagion escalation, with the Christmas celebrations On the way back, it has been constant throughout this week, with 3,036 cases on Monday, 4,137 on Tuesday and 6,846 on Wednesday, total not seen since last October, according to data from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) .
And on Thursday there were 8,785 new cases, the highest daily increase since last September 21.
The positivity rate in Florida for the week of December 10 to 16 it jumps to 5.4% (2.6% the previous one), and 39 deaths are counted, for a cumulative of 62,220 deaths due to Covid-19 since its beginning in March 2020, according to the weekly report that publishes every Friday on Health Department of the state.
According to the most recent data from the Florida Department of Health, the state has a total of 3,739,348 confirmed cases of coronavirus and the number of vaccinated stands at 70% of the population.
Still not reaching dangerous levels from last summer, hospital pressure slowly rises again in Florida to 1,556 hospitalized from the pandemic last week, compared to 1,389 the previous week, and 278 patients in intensive care units (245 the previous week), according to data released Thursday by the US Department of Health and Human Services.
Despite the significant increase in new cases this week, the state governor, Ron DeSantis, said today that it will not take any closure action, while also announcing that a new antibody treatment monoclonal from AstraZeneca for people with serious health problems or adverse reactions to the vaccine.
Omicron variant spreads fast
Given the concern for this new wave of contagion, the mayor of Miami-Dade County, Daniella Levine Cava, issued this Thursday an emergency order for hospitals to report daily the number of hospitalizations for Covid-19, admitted to intensive care units and the availability of beds.
The Levine Cava measure comes at a time when the omicron variant is spreading rapidly throughout the United States and health authorities are asking the population to return to the use of masks and retake the sanitary measures previous.
The speed with which this variant spreads is such that, in Miami-Dade, about 80% of new infections in the last two weeks are due to omicron, according to David Andrews, a pathologist at the University of Miami (UM) , picked up the Local 10 channel today.
In fact, the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC, in English), Rochelle Walensky, today focused on which omicron will be the predominant variant of the coronavirus in the coming weeks in the United States.
The United States is the country hardest hit by the pandemic, with just over 805,000 deaths and 50.6 million infections since March 2020, according to the digital page on the coronavirus of the Universidad Johns Hopkins.
With information from EFE
