COVID-19 cases in Florida and Alachua Counties are on the rise

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Alachua County’s COVID-19 cases continued to surge last week as Florida reported the highest number of new cases in the country.

Meanwhile, local officials reported that most hospital admissions were of the unvaccinated, and they continued to promote the COVID-19 vaccine as the best way to protect yourself and others around you from the virus and its variants.

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Summary of the district

According to the Florida Department of Health’s weekly COVID-19 data report released on Friday, Alachua County added 664 new COVID-19 cases over the past week, with a test positive rate of 11.4% for new cases. The previous week’s positivity rate was 8.3% with 372 cases.

A total of 26,683 cases have now been identified in the county, including at least 175 cases of variants of the strain affecting residents aged 2 to 78 years. However, the majority of cases of variants are from the Alpha strain, which was first identified in the United Kingdom, according to Paul Myers, Florida Department of Health administrator in Alachua County, five cases of the Delta variant had also been found by Thursday.

The FDOH report did not include deaths by county in its most recent update.

The breakdown by the U.S. Centers for the Control and Prevention of COVID-19, which lists the deaths by week, showed that Alachua County had fewer than 10 deaths between July 15 and July 21, but did not provide any further details.

There were 164 new COVID-19 hospital admissions over the same period, a sharp increase from 107 the previous week. The district was rated by the CDC as having a high transmission rate in the community as of Thursday.

After spikes across the country and nationwide, the University of Florida reported between July 16-22, the FDOH timeline, and 38 new positive cases between July 15-21, the CDC timeline, a total of 10,386 since Sunday since March 18, 2020 The previous weeks had 24 and 15 weeks respectively.

Alachua County’s public schools have reported four COVID-19 cases and no student cases so far for July.

Here is a breakdown of the new cases in the surrounding counties:

• Bradford: +175 (3,467 total)
• Colombia: +279 (8,851 total)
• Dixie: +62 (1,738 total)
• Gilchrist: +56 (1,769 total)
• Lafayette: +33 (1,678 total)
• Drop-off: +155 (3,907 total)
• Marion: +1,056 (34,235 total)
• Putnam: +369 (7,507 total)
• Suwannee: +122 (5,641 total)
• Union: +77 (2,042 total)

Status summary

Florida’s COVID-19 test positive rate continued to rise for the fifth straight week. In the week of July 16-22, it reached 15.1%.

The Florida Department of Health’s weekly COVID-19 report listed 78 new coronavirus-related deaths from the past week. At the same time, the report’s updated cumulative total was 38,670,282, higher than the previous week – well over 78, the Palm Beach Post reported on Saturday.

More:Florida becomes US epicenter of COVID, reports false death toll

The department did not immediately answer two calls to the main media line, a call to the media line outside of business hours, and an email from The Sun on Sunday to indicate which number was correct and why the data did not match. However, his report states that “all data are preliminary and subject to change”.

In the same report, the state also listed 73,199 new COVID-19 cases for last week, nearly 30,000 more than the previous week and the highest since the FDOH began publishing data reports weekly instead of daily. Florida’s total cumulative cases were reported at 2,479,975.

According to weekly figures from the CDC, Florida, the third largest state in the United States, had more positive COVID-19 cases last week than the other four states of the five most populous states combined. These other four are, from highest to lowest, California, Texas, New York, and Pennsylvania.

Vaccinations

Vaccinations increased overall across the country in July, the report shows. 245,954 doses were administered in Florida last week, including 142,045 first shots and 103,909 final shots. So far, about 11.5 million people, about 52.2% of the state population, have been vaccinated at least partially.

In Alachua County, 1,220 people were vaccinated last week and more than 140,000 residents were vaccinated against the virus in total. With about 51.5% of the county’s total population vaccinated, the county is slightly behind the state’s overall vaccination rate.

The County DOH had two upcoming walk-up vaccination events listed on its website on Sunday. Both were scheduled on Mondays and Fridays from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. at the Thomas Coward Auditorium, 224 SE 24th St., Gainesville.

“The bottom line is, if you want to prevent you from getting COVID-19, the best way to do it is by getting vaccinated,” Myers said in a phone interview Thursday. “People have to get vaccinated.”

– Reporter Danielle Ivanov covers higher education and general duties. Contact her at DIvanov@gannett.com or on Twitter @DanielleIvanov.

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