Flagler Reports Another Covid Death; School District Postpones All Fall Sports Indefinitely

The 92-year-old woman had been hospitalized, then transferred to hospice, Bob Snyder, the Flagler Health Department chief, said today. In addition, he said, there were 18 covid-related hospitalizations at AdventHealth Palm Coast this afternoon. Capacity at the hospital today was at 11 percent overall, and 28 percent in its intensive care unit. The hospital can and does bounce patients around its network in Central Florida when necessary, and it does have capacity for expanding its ICU.

People reporting to the hospital with Covid-like illnesses are again increasing, rising the week of July 12 to about 55. “If there was a decrease, it was momentary, but I’m looking at the graph and it’s a straight shot up,” Snyder said.

Late this afternoon, and a day after it announced that school would almost certainly be postponed two weeks for students–the school board is expected to ratify that decision next week, but approved it on Tuesday–the Flagler County school district announced that all fall sports would be postponed until further notice. The announcement follows revelations on Tuesday that a Matanzas High School student-athlete who was in training for fall sports had tested positive for the virus, though it isn’t known where the student contracted it. Fall sports include football, bowling, golf, swimming, cross country, and volleyball.

“What does this mean for our athletes?” Jason Wheeler, the district’s chief spokesman, said in a statement. “Our conditioning program will continue as it has since it began last month, with safety protocols in place. Currently, our teams are in Phase 1 of our multi-phased system. However, tryouts and practices will not begin on July 27th as originally scheduled. The head coaches and athletic directors at each school can give additional information to our students and their families. District staff continues to work with school administrators and athletic directors to monitor and reevaluate our protocols.”

The district is still encouraging athletes and potential athletes to complete their online Athletic Clearance so that they may participate in conditioning and be ready for tryouts, practices, and competitions when they are allowed to resume. Again, each head coach can help our families with this process. Our fall sports include football, bowling, golf, swimming, cross country, and volleyball.
Other extra-curricular activities have not been postponed or cancelled, but participants must follow the guidelines issued by the district earlier this summer. (See the full guidelines here.)

On Monday–the same day that the state’s teachers union sued Gov. Ron DeSantis to stop the reopening of schools in person–the Florida High School Athletic Association in a nearly five-hour meeting elected not to follow the recommendations of its own medical committee, which was urging delays, and voted to let all fall sports proceed as scheduled, all the while leaving it to individual school districts to tailor their schedules to their preferences, based on local circumstances.

After several weeks of recording fewer than 14 positive coronavirus cases a week for eight weeks going back to early May–that is, following the April lockdown–Flagler County began to see its case load surge in tandem with the surge across Florida, now a national epicenter of the pandemic. More than half the county’s cases have been recorded in the last four weeks, with a high of 139 last week and 82 so far this week, with three days to go. The state department of health reported today 13 additional cases for Flagler, and a positivity rate of over 10 percent in the first four days of this week (773 tests reported by the state and 82 positive. The local health department, using different county-by-county metrics that include antigen tests, is reporting a 14-day positivity rate of 6.3 percent. There is no uniform standard for covid numbers in the nation.)

Florida reported 9,785 new cases today for a cumulative total of 379,619. The state also reported 139 additional deaths, for a total of 5,345.

Last week President Trump in a Fox News interview attributed the higher number of cases to increased testing. The claim is inaccurate. An analysis by The New York Times published today notes that the “The average number of tests conducted nationwide has grown by 80 percent since early June, to 780,000 per day. Daily case counts have grown by 215 percent in the same period.” Further, “Florida, the state with the largest discrepancy, is reporting more than 11,000 new cases per day, on average, while only about 2,400 cases each day would be expected because of increased testing. California and Texas numbers are also far above what would be expected.”

But Trump, in a significant shift, this week for the first time encouraged people to wear masks. Mask-wearing is an essential means of helping to lower the spread of the disease, particularly by asymptomatic people. While the median age of those  infected had fallen to the 30s as the June surge began, the median age has again risen slowly into the low 40s, reaching 42 today statewide. That means half the nearly 10,000 people who tested positive in the past day were younger than 42, and half were older.

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