JACKSONVILLE, Fla. – Florida just changed how it reports COVID-19 cases, deaths, testing rates and vaccination data from daily to weekly, calling it a transition from an emergency response to a more traditional public health response.
The Department of Health’s first weekly-only report, released Friday afternoon, showed 12,157 new cases of coronavirus among Florida residents, 10.5% increase in cases over the week ending June 4
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The state added 40 additional deaths.
The DOH is no longer providing information on where the deaths occurred, so while some of those 40 deaths reported in the last week were likely in the greater Jacksonville area, we don’t know for sure.
The report also no longer includes data on non-residents who are infected with or die of COVID-19 in Florida. We reported a week ago that the total number of people diagnosed with COVID-19 in Florida since the pandemic as 2,329,867, there is not a compatible number in this weekly report, only that the total number of residents infected was 2,300,786.
Also, the number of people hospitalized with COVID-19, reported daily since March 2020 is not in the new “weekly situation report.”
“There’s no information that’s being withheld from the public,” Dr. Shamarial Roberson, Florida’s deputy secretary for health, told the News4Jax Tallahassee Bureau earlier this week.
While the state ended daily reporting to the public, it will continue to report daily case information to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
A new feature in the weekly report is the number of cases diagnosed per 100,000 of the population in the past seven days. Statewide, there were 55.3 new cases per 100,000 statewide. That number is higher in Duval County, with 70.1 per 100,000, along with Baker County (79.7), Nassau County (62.8) and Union County (77.4).
The number of infections per 100,000 was slower than the state average in Clay (54.1), Columbia (49.1) St. Johns (45.8), Flagler (40.3), Putnam (39.5), Alachua (27.9) and Bradford (24.2).
The number of Floridians age 12 and above vaccinated with one or more shots rose to 10,460,797 -- an increase from 53% to 55% in a week. Among those 65 and older, 82% are vaccinated.
County vaccination rates range from a high of 67% in Sumpter County, home of The Villages, to a low of 27% in rural Baker and Union counties. Clay County’s rate is 39%; Duval’s is at 45%, Nassau is at 48% and St. Johns County’s rate is 59%.
Florida county-by-county COVID-19 data
After more than a year of being at its highest activation level, a Level 1, Florida’s emergency operations center was downgraded earlier this month to a Level 2. Despite the end of a 24/7 emergency response, the state says it is not lowering its guard.
“We have data where we are looking at emergency departments. We have algorithms where we are detecting anything that may be unusual in ERs, even outside of COVID-19 in those emergency rooms,” Roberson said.