By Annie Hensley
This week, Florida had the dubious distinction of being the first U.S. state to experience more COVID-19 deaths in this phase of the pandemic than during its previous peak last winter.
Not that this milestone is clear on the official Florida State dashboard, which is also missing other crucial information entirely, in particular, the number of COVID-19 patients hospitalized, and those in the ICU. It’s an essential part of the picture, given that Florida had, as of August 10th, 15,169 hospitalized Covid patients, comprising 27% of all hospital patients, amongst hospitals reporting to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. Leaving hospitalizations out of the report makes it easy for Governor DeSantis to ignore that Florida has, according to Becker’s Hospital Review, the highest COVID-19 hospitalization rates in the country by a significant margin.
The Seminole County dashboard—administered by the county’s Office of Emergency Management—is, in contrast, a model of clarity. It updates daily with all the important figures: COVID-19 hospitalization and ICU figures, vaccination figures, both as a percentage of those eligible and of the total population, numbers tested, and positivity percentage. Boom, all the information is right there. As emergency manager, Alan. S. Harris, noted during the SemDems General Meeting earlier this month, Office of Emergency Management personnel call hospitals daily to update the figures. Because Florida has not declared a State of Emergency, hospitals have no requirement to report their figures, but as an Emergency Management staffer told us, “They do it out of the goodness of their hearts.” We’re lucky to have a dedicated emergency management team here in Seminole County giving the new spike of COVID-19 cases the attention it deserves.