Covid Deaths in Flagler at 47, Week’s Positive Cases Shatter Record in Evidence of Thanksgiving Spike as Vaccines Arrive

“It was a pretty rough week, we expect those trends to continue,” Bob Snyder., who heads Flagler County’s Health Department, said this afternoon. “I hope not, but we’re in that phase of the virus that’s most concerning for us.”

Dr. Stephen Bickel, the medical director at the Flagler and Volusia health departments, said today week’s case spike is attributable to a combination of Thanksgiving’s gatherings between people (and travelers) and colder weather further keeping people huddled inside.

There were at least 22 positive cases in Flagler County schools last week according to the documented tally produced by Rogue Flagler Schools, the Twitter feed. Seventeen of the cases affected students. There were five cases at Flagler Palm Coast High School and five at Bunnell Elementary.

“I was kind of pleasantly surprised during the earlier parts of the fall,” Bickel said, as numbers in Flagler and Florida lagged the greater surge in much of the country. “Now we’re starting to push toward our highest levels from the summer. I think it’s only going to get worse because of the weather and travel and increased contacts. I hope I’m wrong but I’m expecting it’s going to get worse, and also people are kind of burned out with trying to be safe with Covid.”

Hospitalizations at AdventHealth Palm Coast this afternoon were down to 11 , from 17 near the end of last week, according to the Agency for Health Care Administration. Hospitalizations reached a high of 20 on two successive days the first week of December. Cumulatively, 216 Flagler County residents, or 6.7 percent of those who have tested positive for the virus, have been hospitalized with a primary diagnosis of Covid-19. Over 20 percent of those hospitalized have died.




Flagler County’s hospitalization rate is somewhat higher than the state’s rate of 5.1 percent, with 60,000 hospitalized since the beginning of the pandemic in Florida–still a much higher ratio than some assumptions, erroneously repeated by an elected official as recently as this month at a public meeting, that 99.99 percent of those infected conquer the virus with little trouble. Close to 4 percent of those hospitalized have been 24 years old or younger. Statewide, the ratio between hospitalizations and deaths is significantly higher than in Flagler, at 34 percent. Not every single person who has died of Covid was hospitalized, though the overwhelming majority were.

“This is the time to be more careful than ever,” Bickel said, “we want to keep this under control until relief is on the horizon, hope is on the way. We don’t want to get massacred before the re-enforcements arrive.”

They’ve been arriving: Florida is receiving a shipment of about 120,000 vaccine doses from Pfizer this week and will get another 360,000-plus doses of a vaccine from Moderna, Gov. Ron DeSantis announced Monday, the News Service of Florida reports. The second shipment of the Pfizer vaccine will come days after DeSantis announced what was expected to be a week-long delay in the new supply.

AdventHealth Daytona Beach got a shipment of vaccines for its staff. Only front-line health workers are getting the vaccine in this round, along with 138,000 nursing home residents. CVS and Walgreens won a federal contract to administer the vaccine in assisted living facilities and nursing homes.

“CVS and Walgreens have received doses, they began receiving doses last week and this week for providing vaccines to the nursing homes and the assisted living facilities and group homes for the developmentally disabled,” Snyder said. “That would be administered by pharmacists from CVS or Walgreens.” The two companies have some 20,000 pharmacies across the nation. The reliance on the two companies “underscores how, after years of underinvestment in public health, the U.S. is highly dependent on for-profit companies for critical public services such as immunizations,” the L.A. Times reported earlier this month.

The vaccine is free to those receiving it, but CVS and Walgreens can bill Medicare $16.94 for the first shot and $28.39 for the second, for a total of $45.33 per patient. There are 3 million residents in long-term care facilities in the United States.

Gov. Ron DeSantis, a lawyer with no experience in public health, medicine, epidemiology or science, again took issue with Centers for Disease Control guidelines on vaccine distribution on Monday, saying he disagreed with letting front-line, essential workers such as cafeteria workers get the vaccine alongside nursing home residents.




Still, as of Sunday, 40,000 Floridians had received the first dose of the vaccine, rather evenly distributed across most age groups, according to the Florida Department of Health. As of Sunday just 24 people had received their first dose in Flagler, 243 in Volusia and 599 in St. Johns counties.

DeSantis said about 61,000 doses of the Moderna vaccine were delivered Monday and that he expected another 300,000 delivered on Tuesday. Unlike the Pfizer vaccine, which must be stored at minus 70 degrees Celsius, the Moderna vaccine can be stored at regular freezer temperatures, or minus 20 degrees Celsius.

Snyder said he’d been told the vaccine had arrived at AdventHealth Palm Coast for staff there, though the hospital’s public affairs office did not respond to an email asking for confirmation by the time this story first published. Snyder said the vaccine is being administered only to direct-care staff such as nurses, intensive care personnel, physicians and others who have a lot of contact with patients. “I’m sure every hospital has prioritized their lists for distribution,” he said.

The general population is not expected to start getting inoculated until February or March. Once that happens, a free, no-appointment drive-up vaccination site will be ramped up seven days a week at the Flagler County Fairgrounds on Sawgrass Road.