Florida’s long, hot, ‘sad’ COVID-19 summer

sunshine
On Memorial Day, the summer looked really good. It wasn't.

With Labor Day now out of the way, Florida is unofficially emerging from a summer of sorrow, death, and pain that few saw coming back at the unofficial start of summer, Memorial Day.

The delta variant of COVID-19 hit Florida hard, harder than any other state except possibly Louisiana, catching off guard a Sunshine State that began the summer confident the pandemic was in the rearview mirror.

Since Memorial Day, more than 1 million Floridians have come down with COVID-19. Though hospitals say they have seen an easing in recent weeks, they were bursting with COVID-19 patients by mid-August, particularly in intensive care units, where many were on ventilators. Many hospitals were canceling nonessential treatments.

Since Memorial Day, the Florida Department of Health has reported 9,455 deaths from COVID-19.

It didn’t look this way three months ago, when people were done ranting about COVID-19 and officials were projecting a nearly full return to normal, if not right away, then by the end of summer.

Remember when there was no such thing as a COVID-19 delta variant? Until Memorial Day, it was known as the variant from India, one of many geographically identified variants floating around. It was May 31 when the World Health Organization dubbed it delta.

By then, Gov. Ron DeSantis had effectively ended the emergency, at least as far as the state was concerned.

Earlier, in the first week of May, DeSantis issued a pair of executive orders, effectively banning emergency COVID-19 safety measures, particularly at the local level. One order declared, “I find that it is necessary for the State of Florida to enhance its rapid and orderly restoration and recovery from the COVID-19 emergency.”

Even local leaders who had been far more aggressive than DeSantis in cautioning about COVID-19, such as Orange County Mayor Jerry Demings, essentially called off the battle.

Florida’s COVID-19 pandemic had waned so much that the state stopped issuing daily bulletins, pulling back to just weekly situation reports. Three days after Memorial Day, Florida essentially declared the crisis over and stopped issuing those daily bulletins.

The state’s first weekly report, issued June 4, showed that Florida recorded 14,155 new COVID-19 cases and 252 new deaths attributed to the disease in the previous seven days. While tragic to the 252 families who suffered losses and to the 14,155 people who were infected with the virus, the numbers were far below the 100,000-plus new cases a week Florida had seen in the winter. The 1,000 deaths a week the state had recorded at points during the winter and previous summer.

By early June, just 4% of Florida’s hospital beds were occupied by COVID-19 patients, and 9% of the beds in intensive care units, according to the reports posted by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The summer of 2021 was supposed to be post-COVID-19 Florida’s resumption of a full life.

For a reassuring three or four weeks, it looked that way, at least in Florida.

If there was any comfort, it showed up in the state’s vaccination rates. On June 10, the Florida Department of Health reported that 413,880 people came in for vaccination shots the week before. By July, the number of vaccination shots had fallen into the lower 200,000s each week, for several weeks running.

However, delta was dawning.

By mid-June, the delta variant first raised serious concern in southwestern Missouri, where COVID-19 started raging again in a largely unvaccinated local population, and hospitals began seeing a new rush on their services.

By July, it started hitting Florida, in what officials began to dub the surge among the unvaccinated, A few “breakthrough” cases began emerging among people who had been vaccinated, but their symptoms were less severe. Hospitals reported that more than 90% of serious cases were among unvaccinated people.

On July 2, the Florida Department of Health reported its first clear rise in cases: an increase of 15,684 reported that week, up from 11,048 the week before. The next weekly report showed 23,747 new cases. The July 16 report showed 45,449, the largest one-week total since February when the winter surge was waning.

Two weeks later, Florida was reporting more than 100,000 new cases of COVID-19 each week. According to the CDC, by the end of July, 13% of Florida’s hospital beds and 23% of ICU beds were filled with COVID-19 patients. In ICU units.

By Aug. 19, 30% of all Florida hospital beds held COVID-19 patients, the highest percentage in the country; and 47% of the ICU beds were filled with COVID-19 patients, second-highest to Mississippi.

Floridians apparently were getting alarmed.

By late July, the demand for vaccinations picked up again.

About the same time, DeSantis began his traveling crusade to promote COVID-19 treatment with monoclonal antibodies — with a vigor he never demonstrated to promote vaccines.

Since Aug. 5, DeSantis has made dozens of stops, two a day some days, around Florida announcing the openings of clinic programs providing free Regeneron-brand monoclonal antibody treatments, with serum provided by the federal government and the clinic arranged and promoted by the state.

On Sept. 2, DeSantis declared that more than 40,000 Floridians had received monoclonal treatment in less than a month.

By then, the number of Floridians getting COVID-19 vaccines had climbed back over 400,000 each week.

August is when Floridians started dying in large numbers from COVID-19, though exact dates of deaths are no longer publicly disclosed.

On Aug. 6, the Florida Department of Health reported 616 newly recorded deaths, the highest one-week total since March. The next week, 1,071 deaths were reported over seven days, then 1,486, then 1,727.

“I think it’s a really sad thing,” DeSantis said of the rising death toll last week.

In the CDC’s most recent update, current as last Wednesday for Florida, the hospital pressure had eased just a bit, at least showing a hopeful trend. The report showed 29% of Florida’s hospital beds were filled with COVID-19 patients, and 47% of the ICU beds held COVID-19 patients.

The hospital bed rate still was the highest in the country. The ICU bed rate has dipped below the rising rates found in several other Southern states, with Mississippi now reporting 53% of its ICU beds filled with COVID-19 patients.

The number of new cases also began dropping in the past two weeks, though it remains well above 100,000 new cases per week for the sixth consecutive week, a level topped only four times in the summer of 2020.

In the Department of Health’s most recent weekly COVID-19 report, issued last Friday, Florida recorded 129,202 new cases and 2,345 new deaths.

The report also said that 462,269 more Floridians came in for COVID-19 vaccine shots.

That means that since Memorial Day this year — through the most recent reports covering last Thursday — 1,025,601 new COVID-19 cases were reported in Florida.

In 2020, the year of COVID, Florida reported 596,523 new cases of COVID-19 between Memorial Day and Labor Day.

Since Memorial Day this year — through the most recent reports — 9,455 Floridians have been reported to have died of COVID-19 in Florida this summer.

In 2020, Florida reported 9,619 COVID-19 deaths between Memorial Day and Labor Day.

Scott Powers

Scott Powers is an Orlando-based political journalist with 30+ years’ experience, mostly at newspapers such as the Orlando Sentinel and the Columbus Dispatch. He covers local, state and federal politics and space news across much of Central Florida. His career earned numerous journalism awards for stories ranging from the Space Shuttle Columbia disaster to presidential elections to misplaced nuclear waste. He and his wife Connie have three grown children. Besides them, he’s into mystery and suspense books and movies, rock, blues, basketball, baseball, writing unpublished novels, and being amused. Email him at [email protected].


17 comments

  • Ron Ogden

    September 7, 2021 at 6:11 am

    What’s the point? My summer was not sad–even though I took a Covid shot and it put me in the hospital with its side effects. I recovered quickly and got on with my life. More people should do that, especially so-called journalists who otherwise indulge themselves in this CoVid-fear, anti-DeSantis brainwashing that is the substance of this story.

    • Alex

      September 7, 2021 at 9:19 am

      Waaaahhhhhhh it’s the media’s fault!!!

      No, it’s because far right kooks get everything wrong.

      Lol

  • JD

    September 7, 2021 at 7:14 am

    “About the same time, DeSantis began his traveling crusade to promote COVID-19 treatment with monoclonal antibodies — with a vigor he never demonstrated to promote vaccines.”

    This has been my question for weeks. Why didn’t DeSantis promote the vaccines as much as the monoclonal antibodies? It seems reactionary vs preventive. There’s no reason he could not do both – at the same time within the same trips.

    “An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure”

    And while I think the point of the article is partially to swipe at Desantis, it is somewhat deserved. He took a gamble with opening the state up in the fashion that was done. And it had looked like he was right in terms of economy . All until the delta rolled through and he wasn’t right in terms of public health.

    And to be fair, the economy is rip roaring, but people unnecessarily died and a bunch of goodwill was lost.

    Why can’t he reverse course a little bit instead of what looks like doubling down?

    • Ron Ogden

      September 7, 2021 at 8:32 am

      “Why can’t he reverse course a little bit instead of what looks like doubling down?”
      Because the minute he does, Powers, FLAPOL and Fried will kick in with “flip-flop” and “weakens” and “admits defeat” and “acknowledges failure”, etc. They have buttons on their keyboards marked with those phrases. And then Fried will emerge from her latest phog to utter some nonsense and we will be treated to more of her smug, sophomoric photos.

      • JD

        September 7, 2021 at 8:43 am

        Sadly, Fair. It seems we all lose in that game.

      • Alex

        September 7, 2021 at 9:08 am

        No, it’s because it’ll piss off the flaming far right idiots who believe Trump’s lies.

    • Jerry

      September 7, 2021 at 7:14 pm

      Because the vaccines do nothing to stop the spread. Look at Israel which has a heavily vaccinated population. They are now the new hotspot. Delta is spreading like crazy and 60% of hospitalizations there are vaccinated people.
      We need more tools than just vaccines.

      It’s very apparent that vaccines alone will NOT end this pandemic. And reality is these shots are simply not very good. They don’t give you immunity. They stop you from spreading it. And they only last 6-8 months. They aren’t as good as everyone was hoping.

  • CMV

    September 7, 2021 at 10:06 am

    The real lead is buried. We’ve been more open than ever and still less deaths in the same period compared to last year as when we were under more restrictions.

    • Alex

      September 7, 2021 at 7:50 pm

      What that the medical profession has gotten much better at keeping people alive?

      Well duh.

    • tom

      September 8, 2021 at 4:04 pm

      It’s almost as if vaccines are saving lives.

    • Professor Emeritus

      September 8, 2021 at 8:06 pm

      CMV Actually no August 2021 already has the worst death count in the pandemic and they are not finished counting

      August 2020 5209 dead
      August 2021 6665 and still counting

  • Isabelle Cooke

    September 7, 2021 at 9:18 pm

    Here are 7 at-home jobs that pay at least $100/day. And there’s quite the variety too! Some of these work-at-home jobs are more specialized, others are jobs that anyone can do.JHG They all pay at least $3000/month, but some pay as much as $10,000.
    GO HOME PAGE HERE FOR MORE DETAILS… http://amazingjobs.tk/

  • Professor Emeritus

    September 8, 2021 at 7:57 pm

    Florida is very determined to hide current deaths so no one has any idea how bad it is. They have reported 6665 deaths in August but a substantial number of deaths in the last 20 day are still sitting on someones desk. Case reports precede death reports by about 21 days. 7 day average Cases hit 17,500 on August 1 and 7 day average Deaths hit 266 on the 22nd. Cases stayed above 17500 for 34 days Hitting peaks in the 21000 range 20% higher That would produce 300 deaths a day. Almost Everyone who will die in September is already infected. Infections in the last 21 days That is over 400,000 infections with a death rate of 1.5% so 285 a day at a minimum . We don’t know if 266 is the final number for August 22, If its higher the total will be higher.

Comments are closed.


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