You know if your governor deliberately refuses to fund testing for and reporting on Covid variants then your state is going to be pretty blind to variants. There is a fix for this -- it involves voting out DeSantis. ‘What we have in Florida is inadequate:’ State’s COVID monitoring system leaves public blind to new variants https://www.sun-sentinel.com/corona...0220214-a2iewposmvbrlacski5vudeiae-story.html Two years into the pandemic, Florida’s monitoring system for COVID has left the public blind to the arrival of highly contagious variants. Florida sends only a tiny fraction of all positive COVID tests to labs for genetic sequencing to learn their strain of coronavirus — only 1% over the entire pandemic. Some states, such as Washington, are sequencing up to 20% of all cases. With so few samples sequenced in Florida, health officials lack the ability to track variants and their prevalence across the state until cases surge. The delta wave showed just how vulnerable Florida is to mutations that arrive undetected. Floridians learned of the first confirmed case of delta in the state in mid-June when the new variant was reported on a federal COVID tracker. By then, the number of cases had begun to soar, followed by hospitalizations, and then record deaths. “What we have in Florida is inadequate,” said Dr. Glenn Morris, director of the Emerging Pathogens Institute at the University of Florida. “What we really need is a system that looks at selected strains across the state, does sequencing and puts it in a model to understand what strains are present and how they may be moving throughout different parts of the state.” Scientists sequence a positive COVID test to decipher the genetic code of the particular coronavirus that infected someone. While hospitals, universities, public and private health labs sequence samples from patients to learn which variants are present, Florida lacks a comprehensive and cohesive system to analyze and share data. The Florida Department of Health documents the number of COVID cases, vaccinations and deaths weekly on its website, but does not publicly release the variants identified in the state or their proportion. Scientists say sequencing alone won’t stop the arrival or spread of more variants, but better detection and communication would give Florida’s counties a chance to act as highly infectious strains becomes more prevalent. Even now, as Florida emerges from the omicron wave, infections aren’t falling as fast as experts had forecasted. Could a subvariant known as “stealth omicron,” or BA.2, be spreading far more widely than detected? Florida so far has recorded 15 cases of the BA.2 omicron variant. Given how quickly the new subvariant has spread elsewhere, researchers believe it likely accounts for more. BA.2 “probably was first introduced in Florida in early January, so it’s been here about a month,” said Thomas Hladish, a research scientist at the University of Florida. “Florida has always had problems with detection. Our surveillance system in Florida is not good. “My spitball estimate: I would guess 50% of cases now are BA.2 or something on that order.” With infection numbers still hovering around 10,000 a day in Florida, COVID-19 will continue to sicken more people and strain health care resources for longer than expected. Morris said the best example of the need for early detection of new variants is what happened with monoclonal antibodies, the COVID treatment Florida’s governor has promoted during the past few months. As the new omicron wave of COVID swept across Florida, clinics continued to use two monoclonal-antibodies treatments that worked against delta, including one made by Regeneron. Federal health officials warned those two treatments did not work against omicron. “What we needed to know is where omicron was and in what areas it would still make sense to be using Regeneron and in which sections of the state it didn’t make sense at all,” Morris said. “When the state was transitioning from one variant to another that was the point where it would have been useful to know.” Researchers are asking for better surveillance not just in Florida but throughout the United States, concerned because the coronavirus, like all viruses, mutates as it moves through large groups of people. If a new highly contagious mutation emerges like omicron did in South Africa, it could move through the population quickly, causing harm before detected. RELATED: New omicron variant is likely in Florida, but it will take some time to confirm that » Dr. Jason Lane of ChenMed, primary medical care centers for seniors, worries about that scenario. “If a variant is homegrown and turns out as devastating as delta, or evolves in the U.S. and we miss it, that’s what worries me about our deficiencies. Hopefully, there is a lot being done to beef it up,” said Lane, national medical director, clinical strategy and outcomes. When asked if Florida has made any advancements in surveillance of variants or has improvements underway, Department of Health spokesman Jeremy Redfern responded: “The Department of Health operates three laboratories capable of genomic sequencing, but our labs are just part of a larger picture. We work alongside multiple partners, like laboratories contracted by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and academic institutions, that are capable of genomic sequencing. The CDC is the primary agency for all public health-related genomic surveillance in the United States. It is best to think of Florida as a puzzle piece that is part of the overall surveillance puzzle.” The private sector jumps in Seeing a need for real-time data, Walgreens has launched its own COVID-19 Index for the public to help identify the spread of virus variants across the U.S. Its monitoring index will be updated using PCR tests administered by Walgreens and analyzed by its laboratory testing partner, Aegis Sciences. The PCR tests come from patients at 5,000 Walgreens pharmacies, including 800 in Florida. The drugstore has one of the largest databases of COVID samples in the country. Walgreens Chief Medical Officer Dr. Kevin Ball said Aegis is able to identify whether a sample is omicron in 24 hours. The Walgreens COVID-19 tracker shows 100% of its COVID samples in Florida are omicron. Ball said the scope and timeliness of Walgreens’ national surveillance system should help catch future variants early and curb their spread. Eventually, he would like the tracker to reflect the makeup of cases within communities as well as provide a statewide overview. “We would like to get to the geo-level. This is a process we are trying to get towards so we can identify an outbreak as it is occurring, what variant is driving it and offer guidance on what to do in those moments,” he said. Florida’s universities and hospitals also are sequencing positive test samples, mostly to learn what strains are appearing in students or patients. And while anyone who does sequencing reports findings into a global database, Florida lacks an infrastructure to extract and share that same data on a statewide scale — to catch a new variant early on. “What one needs is to look statewide and get a sense of patterns emerging at a statewide level,” said Morris at UF. “We have the capacity to sequence and we have utilized it, but we are limited. We are looking at samples from within Alachua County primarily. We don’t know exactly what’s going on in other parts of Florida so we can’t create a unified picture of what’s happening.” Morris said UF and other universities have specialized researchers who could interpret the data and detect mutation strains within the state. Having this information could guide public health response, he said. “There is not a statewide system in Florida which has fully pulled in the capacity present in the state.” Wastewater may be the answer Wastewater monitoring could be the way to find rapidly spreading variants faster. Wastewater monitoring has been used during the omicron surge by scientists in New York City, Boston and Miami and at universities such as the University of Miami to identify surges of cases in certain neighborhoods or dorms even before a variant has been identified from test swabs. People infected with the coronavirus shed it in their feces so a high level may show that a variant is at work, warranting a closer look.
Is Desantis beginning his authoritative conquering of the world The 160 Florida National Guard troops who had been deployed to Ukraine since November have been ordered to leave, the Department of Defense said on Saturday.
Poll: DeSantis leads Democratic rivals for governor, with Crist on top in primary https://www.orlandosentinel.com/pol...0220215-wyd4a6ey6fapnaeydquecmf63m-story.html Gov. Ron DeSantis holds sizable advantages over his potential Democratic opponents in this year’s race for governor, a poll released Tuesday shows. The Mason-Dixon Polling & Strategy survey also has U.S. Rep. Charlie Crist, D-St. Petersburg, well ahead among Democratic candidates for the job. But this far out, those leads could still be because of name recognition, Mason-Dixon pollster Brad Coker said in his analysis. The main poll, taken of 625 registered Florida voters from Feb. 7 to 10, shows DeSantis with a 53% approval rating, unchanged since February 2021. DeSantis’ disapproval also remained virtually unchanged, at 43% compared with 42% a year ago. His approval rating lies exactly between DeSantis’ 61% approval in March 2019, shortly after taking office, and his lowest rating of 45% in June 2020, amid the COVID-19 pandemic and issues with the state’s overwhelmed unemployment compensation system. In the race for governor, DeSantis led all three major Democratic candidates by at least 8 points, a “decent cushion” heading into the year, Coker said. DeSantis led Crist 51% to 43%, his closest margin. He was beating Agriculture Commissioner Nikki Fried 53% to 41%, an 11-point margin, and led state Sen. Annette Taddeo, D-Miami, 53% to 37%, a 16-point lead. DeSantis had a positive approval in all regions except Democratic-leaning Southeast Florida, according to the poll. He was slightly underwater with women, with 47% approval compared with 49% disapproval, but had 60% approval among men. He also had 61% approval among independents, with just 32% disapproval. “These leads all appear to be related to DeSantis’s name recognition advantage, although Crist is almost comparably well known,” Coker said of Crist, a former Republican governor-turned-Democratic congressman. In a survey of 400 likely Democratic primary voters, Crist led with 44% compared to Fried’s 27% and Taddeo’s 3%. Another 26% remained undecided, a “significant” amount, Coker said. Taddeo’s numbers could be due to her low name recognition, with more than half of statewide respondents not recognizing her. The margin for error in the matchup poll was 4 percentage points, with a 5-percent margin in the Democratic voter poll.
Florida's COVID-19 death toll climbs by 1,000 for third week straight as omicron lingers https://www.palmbeachpost.com/story...toll-grows-faster-omicron-lingers/6757721001/ The coronavirus omicron wave is receding across Florida far more slowly than it surged, mimicking a pattern seen elsewhere in the U.S. and across the world. Meanwhile, deaths are mounting at an increasing pace as the pathogen continues to hurt unvaccinated people the most. Florida's COVID-19 case count grew by 122,428 this past week, The Palm Beach Post calculated based on statistics state health officials reported Friday. That's 71.5% lower than the record high recorded four weeks ago on Jan. 14, but more than four times higher than the week of Dec. 17. Cases dropping, deaths rising:COVID: Florida reports 131,699 cases and 1,324 deaths in a week, 'stealth omicron' detected If the omicron wave was ebbing as fast as it came, Florida would have logged fewer than 29,000 new infections this past week. Instead, defying expectations, the variant is lingering. Some parts of the state are faring better. The share of COVID-19 tests statewide that have come back positive this week was 14.3%, nearly 17 points lower than five weeks ago on Jan. 7, when the state recorded its highest positivity level of 31.2%. In Palm Beach County, 11.1% of tests from this past week came back positive, about 29 percentage points less than five weeks ago. Florida has documented 5,732,798 COVID-19 infections since the start of the pandemic. Omicron variant slows:Palm Beach County COVID-19 omicron wave receding slower than expected, sewage test shows As the number of omicron infections stubbornly subsides, Florida's death toll mounts. The state added 1,293 more residents to its fatality count, the most since Oct. 8. COVID-19 deaths can take weeks to emerge in official state statistics. While the death toll escalates, the omicron wave has proven less deadly than the delta mutation surge last summer. About 0.3% of cases recorded since Dec. 3 have resulted in death. Over a similar time period from June 18 through Aug. 27, the case fatality rate was about 0.76%, more than twice as high. Florida's death tolls stands at 67,752 residents. State health officials in June stopped publishing deaths among nonresidents infected here. (More at above url)
Florida COVID update: The latest on cases, deaths and hospitalizations https://www.miamiherald.com/news/coronavirus/article258377143.html Florida on Monday reported 9,333 COVID-19 cases and 582 new deaths to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, according to Miami Herald calculations of CDC data. The CDC backlogs cases and deaths for Florida on Mondays and Thursdays, when multiple days in the past have their totals changed. In August, Florida began reporting cases and deaths by the “case date” and “death date” rather than the date they were logged into the system. Of the deaths added, about 56% occurred in the past two weeks and about 98% in the past 28 days, according to Miami Herald calculations of CDC data. In the past seven days, the state has added 207 deaths and 10,021 cases per day, on average. Florida has recorded a total of at least 5,751,104 confirmed COVID cases and 67,910 deaths. About 14,085,719 eligible Floridians — 65.6% of the state’s population — have completed the two-dose series of either the Pfizer-BioNTech or Moderna vaccines or have completed Johnson & Johnson’s single-dose vaccine, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. COVID-19 HOSPITALIZATIONS IN FLORIDA There were 5,502 people hospitalized for COVID-19 in Florida, according to the U.S. Department of Health & Human Services report on Monday. This data is reported from 255 Florida hospitals. The number of people hospitalized across the state is 259 less than the day prior, when 257 hospitals reported. COVID-19 patients take up 9.71% of all inpatient beds in the latest report, compared to 9.92% among the previous day’s reporting hospitals. Hospitalizations during omicron’s wave have not approached records set during delta’s surge last summer. At delta’s August peak, more than 15,000 patients were hospitalized across the state, according to the U.S. Department of Health & Human Services. Of the people hospitalized in Florida, 882 were in intensive-care units, a decease of 38 from Sunday. That represents about 14.47% of the state’s ICU beds, compared to 14.38% the previous day. Monday’s Miami-Dade County report said there were 390 COVID patients in the county’s hospitals on Sunday, an increase of 201 from the previous day. Of the 36 new COVID patients, 27 (75%) had not been vaccinated. Intensive care patients numbered 88, increased by 51 from a day earlier. Broward County’s Monday report said there were 364 COVID patients in the county’s hospitals, a decrease of 34 patients compared to the day before. (More info at above url)
Only Florida takes pride in finding the least educated county... it would be interesting to line them up with the percentage of people who voted from DeSantis. What is the least educated Florida county? https://www.wfla.com/news/florida/what-is-the-least-educated-florida-county/ It is interesting that even Florida's most educated country only has 29.8% people with a bachelor's degree. Compare that to Wake County, N.C. with 52.8% of people with a bachelor's degree and Durham County, N.C. with 48.2% of people with a bachelor's degree.
Yep... DeSantis is "killing it"... “We are killing it here in Florida,” state sees tourism increase to pre-pandemic levels as DeSantis pitches ‘Vacation To Freedom’ https://www.islandernews.com/news/f...cle_29674e2e-8f16-11ec-ba79-6bfd6038cad7.html COVID: Florida reports 122,428 cases and 1,293 deaths in a week; 1 in 10 US cases were in Florida https://www.palmbeachpost.com/story...ecrease-new-covid-deaths-increase/6783149001/ Feb 14, 2022