‘Normal Life’ Likely a Month Away in Flagler as Omicron Surge and Covid Risks Recede

Flagler County confirmed 708 new covid cases in the week ending last Friday, down from over 1,200 the week before and less than half the peak reached just three weeks ago. “That’s very encouraging. I expected it to continue,” Bickel said. “Florida’s actually kind of ahead of us going down about 70 percent off the peak. That’s typical because the urban areas kind of drive those numbers and they move faster.”

Hospitalizations are not quite down, but flat, hovering day after day in the 40-patient range, give or take a couple of patients, admitted with a primary diagnosis of Covid at Advent Health Palm Coast. It’s a high number, but less than half the peak from last summer. Same story at Flagler Health+’s Flagler Hospital in St. Augustine. There were a total of 44 patients admitted on a primary diagnosis of Covid-19 as of this morning, compared to 42 on Jan. 31, with fluctuations in that same range. Six patients were in the hospital’s intensive care unit, and four were on a ventilator. On Jan. 31, seven were in ICU and five on a ventilator.

The number of patients hospitalized with Covid is at about 650 in AdventHealth’s hospitals across seven Central Florida counties. About 120 of those are receiving ICU-level care. AdventHealth remains at “green” status and continues to operate normally, with no disruptions to scheduled procedures.

In Flagler County schools today, 10 students were confirmed to have tested positive (all but two in three different elementary schools), and no employees were, compared to 20 students and four employees on Feb. 1.




Flagler has recorded 292 deaths attributed to the pandemic so far. Florida has recorded 66,463. The nation just crossed past 900,000 deaths, by far the highest total in the world.

Bickel said the region is about a month away from numbers again reaching the kind of lows the pandemic saw last fall, and before that, in the spring of 2021, before the delta variant struck. By then people had let down their guard and vaccination rates had tapered off, so the variant was poised to ravage the unvaccinated. Omicron was generally but not entirely a less virulent variant, and it found easier ways to break through among the vaccinated.

Vaccinations are not among the brighter spots. There were just 90 shots administered last week in Flagler, and just 143 the week before. Only 62 percent of the county’s population is fully vaccinated, the qualifier only applying empirically at this point, 14 months since the first vaccine was available. Among eligible residents, 5 years old and up, the proportion is 65 percent. Among those 65 and older, it’s 88 percent. That’s lower than the state averages: 65 percent overall, 69 percent for those 5 and up, and 90 percent for those 65 and up.

Flagler’s rate places it in 18th place out of 67 counties, well below such counties as Miami-Dade, which has an 83 percent vaccination rate, Sumter (79 percent), Monroe (77 percent), Osceola (71 percent), Broward (70 percent) and St. Johns, Sarasota and Collier, tied at 69 percent.

On the other hand, Flagler to this day has a cumulative rate of infection that places it fourth-lowest in the state.

AdventHealth physicians say the community’s best defense against Omicron, which is more contagious than previous strains even among those who are vaccinated, is for those who haven’t received Covid-19 booster shots, to get them. Those who have not begun their primary vaccine series will still benefit from doing so and will receive protection from the variant.




For most healthy people, the risk is not very high right now. But for people who are immunocompromised, Bickel said, “the risk is substantial probably for the next month. It’s also a problem that the treatments that we used to have, the monoclonal for this, the new one that actually works against omicron is not readily available.”

Are we past the masking stage? That elicits an answer from Bickel in the form of an epitaph for the entire pandemic: “To me,” he said, as he summed up the situation in his latest WNZF appearance last week, “the big distinction right now is, if you’re vaccinated and boosted, you’re pretty safe, very safe. If you’re vulnerable because of health conditions, be really careful the next month. And if you don’t care, you just don’t care. So it’s sort of like those are the three groups. And I think they’re kind of different messages for each group. It’s hard to give a nuanced message. I think it’s been tough throughout this whole thing to do that because it’s not so black and white. And I think people have tended to call this a big deal and the worst thing that ever happened, and other people say no, it’s not, it’s really a nothing burger. And I think the problem is, it’s neither. So we’ve never really had a really integrated, coherent approach to it. It’s been with the backdrop of our political battles about things. Pandemics are like this.”

It was no different in 1018, he said, during the flu pandemic that year and the next.

Nevertheless, AdventHealth physicians continue to recommend people wear masks in crowded indoor spaces or when in close contact with others. This includes students and teachers in classroom settings. Social distancing and good hygiene practices are also recommended to help cut down on community spread of the virus.