Flagler Records 14th Covid Death; 15% of Flagler Children Tested Are Positive a Week Before School

The death in Flagler was one of 228 statewide reported in the last 24 hours in a 14-day span that’s seen 2,132 people in Florida killed by the disease–an average of 152 a day, more than in any other state in the Union. So far the disease has claimed 9,276 lives in Florida in less than six months, or roughly the equivalent of the combined populations of Flagler Beach and Bunnell. The national toll is 162,000.

Florida and Flagler continues to add new coronavirus infections at elevated rates even as the overall numbers have fallen from their July peak. Despite the decline, the state is experiencing new cases at a rate of nearly 7,000 a day, averaged out over the past seven days. The highest seven-day average in April was just over 1,000 a day.

For comparison’s sake, France, with a population three times that of Florida, never exceeded 4,400 cases a day during its April surge, and is now experiencing a rise in cases again, to 2,000 a day nationwide, prompting officials again to consider restrictions on people’s movement, access to public transportation and possibly schools in some regions of the country, just weeks ahead of schools reopening there.

No such approaches have been or are being considered in Florida, whose governor, Ron DeSantis, continues to downplay the effects of the surge or its perils on a reopened economy or schools. He’s been threatening to withhold money from school districts that reopen only with a remote learning option for their students. Flagler County’s school district plans an Aug. 24 reopening with three learning options, two of them remote. About 37 percent of students are option for remote options. Only six districts ion the state are opting for remote-only education.

As of Friday, Bob Snyder, Flagler’s health department chief, said, the county had accumulated 1,127 total positive cases, including 64 in the first six days of this week, an apparent decline from the previous two weeks, when totals were 143 and 133. But local testing is significantly down, too: the 64 cases are based on just 622 tests this week, according to the Florida Department of Health’s numbers, yielding a positivity rate of 10 percent. (Snyder cited a positivity rate of 6 percent based on a different set of testing data that includes the number of those testing negative multiple times, which artificially dilutes the result. But the trend has been down.)

“The disease is out there and we’re still getting new cases every day in the teens, somewhere in the teens,” Snyder said. “Hospitalizations are stabilized, but still higher than they should be–17 hospitalizations yesterday at our facility related to covid.” Emergency room visits related to covid-like symptoms are slowing, however, and the R value is 0.97: that’s the transmission rate of the virus from one person to another. If it’s at 1, transmissions are taking place, but not multiplying.

In the past 14 days, 155 children younger than 18 have been tested, and 24 have tested positive–a 15.5 percent positivity rate–higher than the state average of 14.1 percent. The numbers are not dissuading school officials from moving forward with reopening. Children confirmed positive in the past seven days in Flagler have included boys ages 1 and 3.

Beyond relaying that 10 school employees have tested positive since the beginning of the pandemic (out of 1,700 employees), the district has not responded to repeated requests for more detailed breakdowns of covid’s incidence in the district.

There’s been conflicting signals about who would decide whether to opt for remote-only education. Strictly speaking, it’s not the governor’s decision, though he and the education chancellor have issued just such an order, allowing local districts to submit plans that leaves them free to choose remote-only, but with the state’s approval. At the Flagler County School Board, much has been said about leaving that guidance to the health department in consultation with school officials. But Snyder punted back the responsibility, saying the health department is only providing an advisory role. Both the school district and the health department have in essence fostered a gray zone that allows both sides to shift the responsibility on the other without it clearly being so.

“We have to keep in mind, the governor, he’s in charge, and the secretary of health, Dr. Scott Rivkees, he’s appointed by the governor. We’re all members of the executive branch, all the health departments in the state,” Snyder said this morning on WNZF’s Free For All Friday. He was addressing the local health department’s role regarding school openings. “Our role here is to advise the school board and provide recommendations on how to safely open up our schools. We’re not decision-makers in this regard. Our role is to counsel and advise, and it’s made very clear by commissioner of education Corcoran and the governor and others that it is the school districts that are the decision-makers in this regard. Basically you have 67 school districts making individual decisions that are for the health and safety of their children and our students and teachers, and that is the basis from which we are advising.”

Snyder was repeating the party line that the DeSantis administration has ordered local; health department chiefs to repeat across the state–not even about whether to open schools, but about how to open them safely. In other words health departments have been ordered to keep the option of keeping schools closed off the table, even as an advisory opinion., Snyder slipped a week ago on the radio and spoke of his wish that remote education was best for now, then quickly amended his statement to say that he was pleased with the district offering parents a choice between in-person and remote schooling. His strained and tortuous statement today reflected the same lack of conviction in the words he spoke.