Flagler Keeping New Covid-19 Cases In Check Better Than Florida, Where Cases Are Rising

Earlier this week New Zealand declared itself Covid-19-free, with no known new cases for 17 days in a row, despite 40,000 people being tested, and all its previous cases resolved through recovery or death. Geographically insular New Zealand had it better than most all along, with a total of 1,504 known cases overall and just 22 deaths (Florida has had 66,000 cases and 2,765 deaths). But it’s now what other nations are aspiring to.

In Flagler County, the last three weeks point to a significant mend, with a surge in testing and no parallel surge in positive cases. The Health Department has reported a total of 3,000 tests in three weeks. That’s 500 more tests than in the eight previous weeks combined. The 5,530 total tests roughly equate to 4.8 percent of the population. The total number of tests does not include the roughly 1,000 tests conducted at the Daytona State College location by AdventHealth over a three-week period. Those tests had to be discarded for being flawed.

More encouraging to local public health officials: the 3,000 tests of the last three weeks have resulted in just 39 positive cases, or a “positivity” rate of just 1.3 percent. That compares with a rate of 8 or 9 percent at the height of the infection season locally, and higher in the rest of the state.

Where Flagler County has been remarkably successful is in controlling infections in nursing homes and assisted living facilities. Those might as well be New Zealand-like island of Covid-free environments. Behind a push by Health Department Chief Bob Snyder, the department, teaming up with local paramedics and the National Guard, tested all 1,600 residents and staff members at all 72 local nursing homes, assisted living facilities and other congregate care homes, including small, residential-home like facilities.

Across Florida, residents of elderly care facilities and staff members there have accounted for a third of all Covid-19 deaths in the state.

So far, with 600 tests accounted for, not a single person, staff or resident, has tested positive, including at such large facilities as Grand Oaks (which had initially resisted allowing testing) and Princeton Village. “We finished testing just last week,” Snyder said as he awaits results on 1,000 tests. “I think we’ll be one of the very first counties that have done all of their congregate care. All these indicators so far are looking well, and a nice point for the county, we sure hope it stays that way.”

If a positive case is detected at any of the congregate care facilities in the future, the investigation of that case will be conducted, and most likely the entire facility will be re-tested, Snyder said. “If need be, in the future, if we had something going on, worst case, more than one facility, we’d have plenty of resources,” such as the so-called Immediate Management Treatment team of eight paramedics, nurses and National Guardsmen who help with testing.

The one large facility that remains untested is the Flagler County jail, though the health department–which routinely tested for hepatitis there–has offered. “I did throw it out there to Sheriff Staly, he said he would talk to his management team and other officers and report back, and I haven’t heard back from him yet,” Snyder said. “We have tested many law enforcement officers for the last three and a half month, since the crisis began.”

Statewide, the picture is a little blurrier. Over the past seven days, the Department of Health has reported more than 1,000 new cases every day, for a total of 8,409 new cases, an average of 1,200 a day, a higher average than at the height of the epidemic in early to mid-April.

At the time, some 11,000 to 13,000 people were being tested per day and producing that high positivity rate. In the past seven days, however, an average of 36,600 people have been tested every single day–more than a quarter million people–so the positivity rate has been a third of what it was in April, at around 3.3 percent.

Still, new cases means that a proportion of the infected will get seriously ill, and proportion will die: the pandemic in Florida is still a threat, with daily deaths in the state remaining above 30 and projected to remain around 30 through August, according to the Institute of Health Metrics and Evaluation, one of the models most closely watched by local and state officials.

The institute has revised its projections of deaths in Florida. It no longer shows a decline in deaths for the remainder of the summer, but a steady, continuous rate, with no indication of a downward trend. The projection reflects the state’s decision to reopen as broadly as it has. Gov. Ron DeSantis announced Phase 2 reopening last week, now allowing for gatherings of up to 50 people and the resumption of most businesses, government and cultural functions.

In Florida, Covid-19 has claimed at least 2,765 lives so far. The Institute is projecting 4,363 deaths by early August. In the United States, more than 110,000 people have died of the disease so far. Some 800 are still dying every day. The institute projects a decline to less than 600 a day by mid-summer, but no drop beyond that yet, and over 145,000 deaths by early August.

“We’re still monitoring the data very carefully and awaiting a steeper downward trend,” Snyder said of the state’s numbers. Meanwhile, he is taking heart in Flagler’s relatively successful containment of Covid-19. As of today, he said, there were just two patients at AdventHealth Palm Coast being treated for Covid-19. Overall, 24 people who are either residents or non-residents of Flagler have been hospitalized since the beginning of the pandemic locally.

Four have died, suggesting that the rest have recovered, or at least been discharged. To this day, the Department of Health is not releasing figures indicating the number of individuals who may be considered “recovered.” But that’s in part because the definition of “recovered” is difficult with Covid-19, a disease that takes long to recover from–for those who fall ill, though many remain asymptomatic–and that exhibits an array of unexpected after-effects, some of them debilitating.

The concern in coming months is about an expected second wave.

“That is what some researchers and public health officials have indicated. We hope that doesn’t happen. We’ve got to plan for the worst and hope for the best, but the reason for that, that’s what history has told us about a virus like this, go back to the Spanish Flu of 1918, and the cold weather brings an uptick,” Snyder said. “And of course we don’t have a vaccine yet for this virus, or a treatment, so that’s why we fear there certainly could be a second wave. But I think we are certainly better prepared for it now than we were in the past, so yes, we will be ready for the next battle if there is one. But we’ve got to stay vigilant to avoid another battle with this. We’ve got to keep doing what we’re doing. That’s why we so much encourage the wearing of facial coverage.”