New COVID-19 cases and positivity rates on the rise in Miami-Dade

With a new wave of omicron variant COVID cases in Miami-Dade, the percentage of local positive tests, known as the positivity rate, has skyrocketed, representing a four-fold increase since April and likely an undercount. due to home tests.

On Monday, Miami-Dade’s seven-day average COVID-19 positivity rate rose to 22%, up from 5% on April 8, according to the county’s daily COVID-19 dashboard. The most recent figure is close to rates at the height of the omicron surge in January, when positivity rates reached 35%.

“We should definitely be concerned now,” said Mary Jo Trepka, an infectious disease epidemiologist and professor at Florida International University (FIU). “In fact, we should have been worried several weeks ago.”

Miami-Dade’s mayor acknowledged the rise in cases and positivity rates, but said county residents are in a better position to weather the surge — the sixth wave since the coronavirus began in March 2020 — as a result of her vaccines.

“Miami-Dade is now in a new phase of the pandemic,” Daniella Levine Cava’s office told the Miami Herald Thursday afternoon. “We have not defeated this virus, but we know how to control it. We are the most vaccinated county in Florida and our protection efforts are paying off.”

As of Thursday, 86% of Miami-Dade’s total population was fully vaccinated, some 2.3 million people. Florida’s complete vaccination rate is 67.5%; the US rate is 66.7%. Fully vaccinated means that individuals have received a single dose of the J&J/Janssen vaccine or two doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech or Moderna vaccines. It does not include a booster, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

Trepka says there’s a positive note to the county’s high positivity rate: Hospitalizations haven’t reached the levels of the initial omicron surge, which began in December, peaked in January and began to decline in February. Immunity to the virus, either from vaccination or previous infection, is keeping many out of the hospital.

“We have the staff, beds and resources to manage the current volume of COVID-19 patients,” said Dr. Aileen Marty, Professor of Infectious Diseases in the Department of Medicine at FIU Herbert Wertheim School of Medicine.

Two new variants of the omicron fuel the rise

The increase in cases is due to the BA.4 and BA.5 omicron subvariants, which are creating a surge of new COVID-19 cases across the country. On Tuesday, the CDC reported that the two variants, first identified in South Africa in January and February, respectively, accounted for a combined 13% of US cases in the week ending June 4.

In the first week of May, the two variants accounted for only about 1% of new COVID cases, the CDC said in its Tuesday update, the first time the entity has broken down the two variants in its weekly report on the variants.

Public health experts have said these variants may be able to evade some immune protections, making them more contagious.

On Tuesday, the first three cases of the BA.4 variant in Florida were found in Miami-Dade County, according to a lab report.

summer rise

In Florida, cases and positivity rates began to rise in early April. New cases rose slowly, and by the end of the month, hospitalizations began to rise, though not reaching the levels of the January surge. Deaths have remained relatively low, with about 100 to 300 weekly deaths in Florida since April.

In the first week of June, the number of cases exceeded double digits. The seven-day average of new cases in the state reached 10,927 on Thursday, nearly double what it was a month ago, when the seven-day average was 5,424, according to Miami Herald calculations of CDC data.

Although Miami-Dade is not making any new safety recommendations, such as requiring masks in county buildings — mandates that county leaders adopted during previous waves — the county says it has a plan to combat the surge.

Levine Cava unveiled his BEST Plan, which encourages the community to get vaccinated and booster shots, get tested if you have symptoms or have been exposed, and stay home if you feel sick.

The CDC recommends that all South Floridians, regardless of their vaccination status, wear a mask in public places and on public transportation. That’s because all four South Florida counties—Miami-Dade, Broward, Palm Beach and Monroe—have a high rate of community transmission, one of the highest in the country.

Experts echo the same security measures.

“We need to make sure our people are up to date on booster shots and flu shots,” Marty said.

Trepka stressed the importance of getting tested and staying home if you feel unwell.

The unvaccinated fill the hospitals

Unlike waves of COVID-19 in the past, hospitals have not been overwhelmed.

The dominant strains of omicron that are circulating are highly infectious and can cause serious illness, Marty said. However, high vaccination rates in the community mean that infections do not always lead to hospitalization, although the immunosuppressed are at risk.

But for those who have not been vaccinated, the story is different.

Says Marty, “76% of hospitalized patients have not been vaccinated against COVID-19, and virtually all of the vaccinated people who end up in the hospital are elderly, immunocompromised, or have other serious conditions.”

Dr. Hany Atallah, medical director of Jackson Memorial Hospital, said Thursday that the majority of Jackson’s COVID patients have not been vaccinated.

“We’re also typically seeing what we’ve seen in the past, which is protection from vaccines,” Atallah said. “So people who are in the hospital who are vaccinated tend to be less sick than those in the hospital who were never vaccinated.”

On Thursday, Jackson Memorial had 124 hospitalized COVID patients, of whom 26 were in the ICU. On January 12, during the peak of the omicron variant, the Jackson had 564 patients hospitalized with COVID-19.

Across Florida, 3,105 hospitalized patients are suspected or confirmed to have COVID, with 297 in an ICU, according to Thursday’s report from the federal Department of Health and Human Services. During last summer’s delta wave and January’s omicron wave, the number of patients in Florida hospitals exceeded 15,000 a day.

Atallah said current trends show hospitalizations will decline in late June.

As health workers struggle to get through the sixth wave of the virus, he says balancing professional and personal safety has been a challenge.

“This has turned into a marathon,” he said. “And the marathon is not over.”

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